UVA Particle Inspection Lighting Options

I am wondering if your realUV LED strip lights would be suitable for particle detection in a cleanroom environment. We currently use an Opti=Lux 365 handheld flashlight in a darkened environment, but I saw your product and wondered if it could provide a wider swath of light and detect more particles.

Our 365 nm UV LED strip lights would certainly be the correct wavelength option, assuming that the 365 nm flashlight is doing a good job of inducing fluorescence in the particles. It would certainly have a wider beam angle (120 degrees), which would also meet your needs for covering a larger area.

My main concern, however, is that the wider beam angle, compared to the narrow beam angle of the 365 nm flashlight, would result in lower fluorescence and thus lower visibility of the particles. It's a bit difficult to know what the minimum fluorescence levels are, as each application differs, but the most technically accurate way of comparison would be to use irradiance values.

We publish the irradiance values for our realUV LED strip lights at the link below, which shows that we are emitting only 228 µW/cm² at 12 inches away.

https://www.waveformlighting.com/photometrics/BP_7021.pdf

Our flashlight (not sure about the strength of the opti-lux product you currently use) has a 12" irradiance value of 29.5 µW/cm², or 29,500 µW/cm² which as you can see is two orders of magnitude higher in irradiance. It could very well be that the lower irradiance, even two orders of magnitude lower, is sufficient for particle detection, but we would need more data and input from your end as far as the final application is concerned.

​If you would like to take an empirical approach, we would perhaps recommend testing and taking advantage of our free returns policy. If for whatever reason you find that the LED strips are not going to work for your project, we would be more than happy to pay for return shipping and offer a full refund. All we ask is for you to keep the LED strips in their original condition, meaning that the adhesive liner must not be removed, and that the LED strips must not be cut into any shorter sections or otherwise altered.

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