{"id":172255,"date":"2023-09-18T08:22:25","date_gmt":"2023-09-18T13:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/researchers-create-optical-device-that-can-kill-pathogens-on-surfaces-while-remaining-safe-for-humans"},"modified":"2023-09-18T08:22:25","modified_gmt":"2023-09-18T13:22:25","slug":"researchers-create-optical-device-that-can-kill-pathogens-on-surfaces-while-remaining-safe-for-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/researchers-create-optical-device-that-can-kill-pathogens-on-surfaces-while-remaining-safe-for-humans","title":{"rendered":"Researchers create optical device that can kill pathogens on surfaces while remaining safe for humans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-create-optical-device-that-can-kill-pathogens-on-surfaces-while-remaining-safe-for-humans3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While it has long been known that ultraviolet (UV) light can help kill disease-causing pathogens, the COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on how these technologies can rid environments of germs. However, the excimer lamps and LEDs that can directly emit light in the required deep-UV wavelengths generally have low efficiency or suffer from short lifetimes. Moreover, UV light of the wrong wavelength can actually be harmful to human cells.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a team led by researchers from Osaka University has shown how an <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/optical+device\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">optical device<\/a> made of <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/aluminum+nitride\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">aluminum nitride<\/a> can be used to generate deep-UV light in a method wholly different from previous approaches. The team made use of a process called \u201csecond harmonic generation,\u201d which relies on the fact that the frequency of a photon, or particle of light, is proportional to its energy. The study is published in the journal Applied Physics Express.<\/p>\n<p>Most <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/transparent+materials\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">transparent materials<\/a> are considered \u201clinear\u201d with respect to their response to light, i.e., photons cannot interact with each other. However, inside certain \u201cnonlinear\u201d materials, two photons can be combined into a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/single+photon\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">single photon<\/a> with twice the energy, and thus, twice the frequency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While it has long been known that ultraviolet (UV) light can help kill disease-causing pathogens, the COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on how these technologies can rid environments of germs. However, the excimer lamps and LEDs that can directly emit light in the required deep-UV wavelengths generally have low efficiency or suffer from short [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}