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-- WITH PHOTO -- TO NATIONAL, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY EDITORS:
Created in Japan: Vacuum Ultraviolet Lamp of the Future
WASHINGTON, April 22, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A team of
researchers in Japan has developed a solid-state lamp that emits
high-energy ultraviolet (UV) light at the shortest wavelengths ever
recorded for such a device, from 140 to 220 nanometers. This is within
the range of vacuum-UV light -- so named because while light of that
energy can propagate in a vacuum, it is quickly absorbed by oxygen in
the air.
This fact makes vacuum UV light extremely useful for industrial
applications from sterilizing medical devices to cleaning
semiconductor substrates because when it strikes oxygen-containing
molecules on a surface, it generates highly reactive oxygen radicals,
which can completely destroy any microbes contaminating that
surface.
Existing commercial vacuum UV lamps are bulky and expensive, however.
They also use a lot of power, run hot, have short lifetimes and
contain toxic gasses that can pollute the environment and harm people.
The new lamp avoids those issues because it was fabricated with a
solid-state phosphor made from a thin film of KMgF3, which is easy to
make, avoids the use of toxic gasses and does not require expensive
rare earth elements.
In AIP Publishing's journal APL Materials, the Japanese team describes
how this solid-state phosphor promises to make future, low-power
vacuum UV lamps that will be more flexible in design as well as being
smaller, longer lasting and relatively heat-free -- all traits that
are typical advantages of solid state lighting in general.
"Our lamp is a promising light source in terms of lifetime, size, heat
conduction and stability," said Shingo Ono of the Nagoya Institute of
Technology in Japan, who led the research. "[It] has the potential to
be an excellent alternate light source to low-pressure mercury lamps,
excimer lamps and deuterium lamps."
In addition to Ono and his colleagues at Nagoya Institute of
Technology, the team was comprised of researchers from Universiti
Teknologi Malaysia; the Tokuyama Corporation in Tokyo; Tohoku
University in Sendai, Japan; and the Kyushu Institute of Technology in
Kitakyushu, Japan.
One of the hurdles they faced was to safely fabricate the phosphor
using a compound containing fluoride, which is itself a toxic,
corrosive and potentially dangerous chemical to handle. One way would
have been to use an inflow of gaseous fluoride to coat the surface of
the KMgF3 thin film, but instead the team discovered a safer route to
fabricating it with pulsed laser deposition -- a way of layering thin
films of chemicals onto surfaces through irradiation with a focused
laser beam.
The article, "Vacuum ultraviolet field emission lamp utilizing KMgF3
thin film phosphor" is authored by Masahiro Yanagihara, Zamri Yusop,
Masaki Tanemura, Shingo Ono, Tomohito Nagami, Kentaro Fukuda,
Toshihisa Suyama, Yuui Yokota, Takayuki Yanagida and Akira Yoshikawa.
It will be published in the journal APL Materials on April 22, 2014
(DOI: 10.1063/1.4871915). After that date, it may be accessed at:
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apm/2/4/10.1063/1.4871915
ABOUT THE JOURNAL APL Materials is a new open access journal featuring
original research on significant topical issues within the field of
materials science. See: http://aplmaterials.aip.org
More Information: Jason Socrates Bardi +1 240-535-4954 jbardi@aip.org
@jasonbardi
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130627/DC39790LOGO
SOURCE American Institute of Physics
-0- 04/22/2014
/Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130627/DC39790LOGO
/Web Site: http://www.aip.org
CO: American Institute of Physics
ST: District of Columbia Japan
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