[Disclosure: AgFunderNews’ parent company AgFunder is an investor in Uviquity.]
- Uviquity, a North Carolina-based startup using next-generation far-UVC light tech to kill pathogens in everything from crops to hospitals, has emerged from stealth with $6.6 million in seed funding.
- The round was led by Emerald Development Managers with participation from AgFunder and filtration specialist MANN+HUMMEL.
- “We believe far-UVC light is the future of pathogen control, and Uviquity’s wide-bandgap semiconductor platform is the key to making it practical, scalable, and safe,” says Uviquity cofounder and CEO Scott Burroughs.
UVC vs far-UVC
Invisible to the naked eye, UVC light (typically administered at wavelengths of 254nm) is widely used to kill pathogens in a variety of settings from hospitals to laboratories, water treatment facilities and airplanes. However, it is harmful to skin and eyes, so can only be used when people aren’t present or inside closed systems such as water pipes or air ducts.
Far-UVC, by contrast, also rapidly inactivates viruses, bacteria, fungi, and mold spores, claims Uviquity, but has a shorter wavelength—200-230 nm—that cannot penetrate the superficial layer of the human eye or the protective outer layer of the skin. This makes it a safer option for continuous disinfection around people.
“The nice thing about far-UVC light is that it not only damages the DNA of the pathogens, but it also disrupts their protein structures, which is important because if you are only damaging the DNA, some microbes can self-repair,” Burroughs tells AgFunderNews.
The far-UVC delivery challenge
The challenge, however, is the delivery system. Currently, says Burroughs, far-UVC systems have relied on bulky gas-discharge lamps (excimer bulbs) with limited scalability and reliability, low wattage and a relatively short lifespan.
The bulbs use a noble gas such as krypton mixed with a halogen such as chlorine. High voltage is then applied to create a short-lived molecule called an excimer, which emits ultraviolet light as it decays, he explains. “But they’re big bulky, expensive, inefficient, and just not desirable.”
One of other disadvantages of excimer bulbs, he adds, is that they “not only emit light at the desired wavelength, but also at longer wavelengths that are not safe for humans, so you have to add an optical filter to filter out the harmful wavelengths.”
Uviquity—founded in 2022 by a team with cross-disciplinary expertise in photonics, semiconductors and the movement of light—wants to solve these problems and democratize far-UVC by developing solid-state semiconductor light sources that it claims serve as a far more compact, energy-efficient, and durable solution, he says.
“We’re talking about chips that can be integrated into everything from light fixtures to air handling systems, food packaging and processing equipment, crop protection systems, water purification systems, and consumer appliances.”
How it works
Uviquity’s chips feature tiny photonic integrated circuits (PICs) that transform blue laser light (at around 445nm) into frequency-doubling waveguides, which effectively halve its wavelength to 222nm.
“The technique is called second harmonic generation or frequency doubling,” says Burroughs. “And if we want to create light with a different wavelength, we can simply choose a different color of blue as the starting point. We can also put multiple wavelengths on the same chip, so for example we could have a green laser on the same chip and frequency double that as well to create a different wavelength.”
Unlike excimer lamps, meanwhile, Uviquity doesn’t need filters to screen out unwanted longer wavelengths “because the light that comes out is very spectrally pure,” he adds.
Water disinfection, crop protection, air disinfection
According to cofounder and chief commercial officer Russell Kanjorski: “One of the beauties of our go to market strategy is that we’re making a light source that’s easy for customers to integrate, so it’s got all the circuitry plus the chip to make the light.
“So at some level, you can envision what we’re making as similar to the way visible LED light engines are made, or even just chips too. If you want visible light, you look up an LED company and you get their chips or their light engines, and then build them into your end application.
“So that means that with a relatively generic set of product offerings, we can cover a lot of applications at once, because we’re not OEM-ing them, we’re not doing all the end applications.”
Uviquity is having conversations with potential customers in everything from water disinfection to crop protection to air disinfection, which became top of mind for many companies during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is also working with one of the largest lighting manufacturers in North America, claims Kanjorski, who notes that while regular UVC lighting at 254nm might remain the best option for some applications where human safety isn’t a concern (LED solid-state options are now available), far-UVC at 200-230 may be more effective.
“For example, there are some pathogens where far-UVC was 10 times more effective than UVC. In other cases, and this is an area of ongoing study, far-UVC can also deal with things like PFAs and other forever chemicals in water. As our wavelength is shorter [than UVC] the energy is higher and the light can disrupt the chemicals more efficiently.”
IP: We’re carving out a space of our own here’
As for IP, says Burroughs, “Frequency doubling has been around for a while. What our IP is centered on is doing this in the far-UVC part of the spectrum and doing it in an aluminum nitride [a compound made of aluminum and nitrogen] platform that allows us to integrate everything onto a single chip.
“We’re carving out a space of our own here that should fend off the competition as soon as they start to hear about what we’re doing.”
According to Kanjorski: “Others who have used frequency doubling to move toward far-UVC in the lab have typically used something called BBO [beta barium borate]. One of the reasons why we were so excited to put our patents around this aluminum nitride platform is because it is a common semiconductor material that’s used for LEDs and other photonics and can be scaled readily.
“Whereas BBO is not something that you can go to a typical foundry and build high-end semiconductor photonics with. So even if somebody were to pursue second harmonic generation using the traditional material set, they wouldn’t have the advantage of the Moore’s Law semiconductor cost and size reduction that we’re building into our base technology.”
‘Our vision is that this becomes ubiquitous’
Uviquity’s plan is to create prototypes this year, deliver customer samples in 2026, and begin pilot production in 2027, with a view to transferring the chip fabrication process to foundry for scale up in 2028.
On pricing, says Burroughs, “We’re looking at a 10x reduction in cost relative to existing excimer bulbs, so our vision is that this becomes ubiquitous in offices, hospitals, schools, public transportation, subways…
“In fact, one of our strategic investors [MANN+HUMMEL] supplies filters and they’re very interested in taking this into the automobile industry. Wouldn’t it be great if you could step into a taxicab or an Uber and know that far-UVC is killing germs from the previous occupant?”
