UV light is a powerful tool used in a variety of commercial, industrial, and healthcare settings. It is used to cure inks, coatings, and finishes, providing a reinforced outer layer. UV lamps emit light from a point source that is scattered in all directions, and the intensity and distance follow the classic inverse-square relationship. A paint containing metallic particles can be an effective UV barrier, although the polymeric binders in such a paint could themselves be subject to UV degradation.
UV technology allows lighting engineers to reproduce UVC radiation, providing very effective disinfecting properties. The use of a replacement UV bulb as a reference to UV lamps is widely accepted in the industry. The development of UV disinfection lamps began in the early 1940s when Westinghouse designed cold cathode UV lamps. A fine adjustment of the UV lamps with the automatic electronic ballasts ensures the lowest tolerance and maximum stability to UV rays.
The decrease in UV emission must be taken into account in the design phase, so that the lamp power does not drop to a level where the UV disinfection system becomes ineffective. Emission spectra of four different maximum wavelengths (266, 270, 275 and 279 nm) from UV-LED PCBs and absolute intensity of a 254 nm UV lamp covered with several numbers of PP films at a distance of 20 cm between UV sources and a spectrometric probe can be used. All UV lamps work with ballasts that provide the starting electrical voltage to ionize the gas in the UV lamp and then limit the current to the nominal level. There are various types of UV lamps for different purposes such as tanning, detecting counterfeit bills, stage lamps with black light, lamps for mineral exhibitions, lamps that produce ozone, and germicidal UV lamps.
Shielding and coating is one way to prevent UV degradation of an object by protecting it with a barrier that is impenetrable to UV photons.
