The international photonics exhibition Photonics West 2018 is now the largest one in the US and has a lot of visitors. Taking place annually in San Francisco, Photonics West 2018 is the world's largest event for the optoelectronics industry.

Bioraytron’s UV-C LED products have been successfully applied on the consumer industries including household appliances, food processing, sanitary ware, kitchen ware, 3C and health industry. At the same time, they have entered home water purifier, medical sterilization and high-tech water purifier industry. The 10-20mW product has achieved mass production. The 20-40mW product samples are submitted to clients. The company’s monthly capacity for UV LED products in 1H18 is 200 thousand and will reach 500 thousand in 2H18. The monthly capacity in 2019 is expected to be 1 million.

IRTronix, Inc. is the strategic partner of LG Innotek and displayed their UV LED products. President Danny Oh indicated that LG Innotek’s revenue of UV LED in 2017 reached 2.6 times. The growing speed in 2018 will be faster. This time, it mainly displayed 100mW UV-C LED, which is one-chip structure and adopts vertical design. In the future, it will focus on the market development of handrail UV sterilizer and water purification.

Nichia released the UV-A LED products with higher power again, and the applications are resin curing and quick printing. Compared with the previous generation, the power of 233B UV-A LED largely increases 40%. The power of 333A also goes up significantly. Besides, 279A CSP UV-A LED was released, and its application is quick printing. 333C and 034C are applied in the spot curing market.

Nikkiso focuses on the major clients. There was an obvious increase in the revenue of 2017-2018. After acquiring AquiSense, it developed toward static and lotic water sterilization market.

DOWA released 280nm product, which adopts one-chip packaging. Under 800mA and 6.9V, the output power can reach 75mW.

LEDinside indicates that static water sterilization and surface sterilization (air purifier and household appliance) don’t require much for time. The requirement of product’s price–performance ratio is quite high. In 2018, the price is expected to reach under USD 1/mW. Moreover, on the market which doesn’t require long product lifespan, the price is likely to be less than USD 0.5/mW. Yet, sterilization of lotic system requires fast purifying time. The market has higher requirement in product’s power. Thus, the UV LED specifications should be higher than 50mW or even 100mW. With the relatively loose requirement on price strategy, manufacturers will develop toward different market positionings and various pricing strategies. In 2018-2020, water and air sterilization market will boost the growth of the UV-C LED market.

Author: Joanne Wu / LEDinside