News: LEDs
23 November 2022
Silanna UV launches SF1 series of UV-C LEDs, highlighting nitrate sensing applications
UV-C LED maker Silanna UV of Brisbane, Australia says that its newly developed ultraviolet LEDs for nitrate sensing applications promise cleaner and safer drinking water free from nitrate contamination. The SF1 series of LEDs leverage the firm’s patented short-period superlattice (SPSL) technology for the challenging 230-260nm UV range (far UV-C and deep UV-C). Silanna now provides a complete reference design for a nitrate detector based on this technology.
Nitrate contamination of drinking water is a growing threat around the world, with nitrates from agricultural, industrial and natural biological processes increasingly contaminating water supplies as populations grow and expand. Detection of nitrates traditionally relied on an expensive process in which broadband light generated by a UV lamp is passed through spectroscopy to extract the far UV-C wavelength needed for sensing.
Silanna says that its SF1 series of LEDs can provide a far more cost-effective, compact, reliable, low-power alternative to traditional methods of nitrate detection. In particular, SF1 series UV-C emitters with a peak wavelength under 235nm and a full-width half-maximum (FWHM) of 10nm are an ideal candidate for nitrate sensing applications, the firm claims.
As well as nitrate detection, Silanna’s SF1 and SN3 UV LEDs are also suitable for sterilization, water and gas sensing, instrumentation, and medical analyzers.
Nitrate sensor reference design
To help users evaluate this new technology and develop products based on it, Silanna has created a nitrate sensing reference design featuring its SF1 series LEDs. This module rapidly and accurately measures the nitrate content of a liquid sample.
The microcontroller-based reference design features a capacitive touch display, safety interlock, and compensates for thermal effects to maintain accuracy and avoid warm-up delay. The UV-C LED package’s built-in 30-degree parabolic lens eliminates the need for secondary optics, making the system even more compact and cost effective. The module requires less than a second to make a measurement (not only saving time but also extending component lifetime to over 100,000 measurements) and the concentration of the nitrate is measured at a resolution of 0.01mg/L-N according to estimates.
