 All right this week's IonMPI is Broadcom. Yes. Lady, what is this week's IonMPI? Well interesting because you know we haven't actually covered a Broadcom product so I'm very happy that we're we're finally doing it. Broadcom you know you you see the logo and you of course you hear from them they they make Wi-Fi chips and of course they make the Raspberry Pi chip and many other popular things your chance or your router your computer has Broadcom wireless communications devices but they also make other stuff and I think I think they merged with another company and they they have Opto electronics as well. So this week we're actually going to be talking about UV LEDs so this product is I want to get the part number correct it's the AUV3-SQ32-0 RT-0K it's a 35 3.5 by 3.5 millimeter UV LED with a nice lens these are really luxurious UV LEDs their surface mount they're extremely powerful I think they do up to like 300 sorry 700 milliamps current through them if you heat sink them properly used for a lot of purposes but you know one of the cool things is that you know you can buy low-cost UV LEDs but these are really really nice ones and they are a great replacement for CCFL bulbs as we'll talk about so UV LEDs as you can expect maybe remember from grade school or high school there's the visible spectrum that you know from violet to red you know violet from the bottom and red to the top here the longer wavelength is red and the shorter wavelength is violet and then you see the rainbow and then you know beyond that is the infrared lower power lower wider wavelength and UV you know higher power shorter wavelength that goes above and you see the UV spectrum is actually quite large so that's something to watch for UV is it's not like when we say red or yellow or green or violet we're talking about a very small sliver of the visual visible spectrum talk about UV it's actually like a full range it's quite wide so one of things we'll talk about is that the nanometer wavelength and how you want to keep track of that you know the UV wavelength thank you so much so UV is divided up into subsections UVA UVB UVC there are different ones that are used for you know like you see UVC is germicidal and there are some that are better different wavelengths are different are better for different purposes which we found out when we were actually researching for you know at the beginning of the COVID pandemic people were using UV to sterilize surfaces but we were also looking at like what does it take to cure epoxies and you actually can't mix and match them you do have to really have the frequency tuned which is one of the cool things about the Broadcom LEDs is you can get them in different bins traditionally what people use are and historically you probably remember the black light bulbs watch out black light bulbs are actually different than UV bulbs these I think are I think black light bulbs they have a purple effect and they make you know white things glow and they make things fluoresce but they're not necessarily good for curing or germicidal or medical uses so you know still a lot of people have used fluorescent bulbs to create UV lamps sorry UV lamps in the fluorescent format to create that wavelength of light you can see on digitally they actually carry small bulbs that you know you have to drive with the ballast and they're not really easy to use but this is historically how you would get UV light and you still see this you know I see disinfecting bulbs or if you go into a restaurant you'll see you know there's a bug zapper or sterilizing lamps are often still UV fluorescence but if you're an electrical engineer and you want to add a UV LED for curing properties or germicidal properties or you know whatever purpose these UV bulbs are they're delicate they break easily because they're glass and so especially something portable they're large you have to have a lot of circuitry to support them you have to protect them and of course the light is going in every which direction so they're not focused and for a lot of curing proper curing purposes you want to make sure that you're only emitting UV light on the thing that you need to because UV light you don't want it to go into people's eyes and you don't necessarily want to put it on people's skin for a very long time and so that's one of the things about these you know UV bulbs is they you know sometimes they have a wide spectrum sometimes a narrow one but they definitely have a wide physical you know the the light is spreading physically throughout a wide space and you have to have a reflector to reflect the back of the bulb out something you don't have to deal with with you don't have to deal with when you're using UV LEDs so you know UV LEDs are quite popular you have seen we did projects with them here's a project where we made it you know if you get your manicure done and use gel you're probably familiar with these LED bulb or sometimes for us involved curing devices you put your hand underneath it and it cures the shell act very quickly it's very hard UV it was reading about it's actually one of the few lights it's like kind of the last light frequency that can affect chemical bonds which is why you see it so much recently we actually used it with UV resin to make keycaps because we're doing a lot of keycap projects UV curing for resin is amazing it's it's extremely fast to the resin as long as it's clear and the light can get all the way through you can cure in a couple seconds or a minute and it's very strong and you know turns this liquid into a solid almost instantly and then historically you know I was actually think about when was the first time I used a UV lamp if you're doing photolithography making silk screens or in this case I was making a PCB as you see in the beginning of this ancient tutorial now 15 plus years old I was using a 15 watt UV fluorescent bulb of course now would use a UV LED lamp instead because I would get much better focused light and a lot of this is possible because of the you know the 5 millimeter UV bulb that we've been you know using a lot of and we have we have these in the store the thing about these bulbs though is they're not bend you know when you get them you know they kind of have a rating but often that rating isn't specific you don't really know what you're getting and you don't necessarily want to get you don't have to test each one to make sure that's emitting in that frequency you need because again depending on whether you're doing curing or medical you're going to have different wavelengths that you need so the nice thing about these Broadcom UV LEDs is they're fully binned like when you buy them you are going to get the frequency you want and they're available in three different bins 365 385 and 395 and then you know the selector guide you also have different viewing angles and you know there's specifications so you know if you're making a real product use these do not use those through-hole LEDs those through-hole LEDs are great for you know if you're making gel manicure curing devices and that's fine because it doesn't matter but you know if you're if you're using these UV LEDs for a proper purpose in a device I would really recommend getting binned LEDs I tell people that they're more expensive but you know what you're going to get and they're reliable there's also weight in flux bands and forward voltage bands and color bands and if you're doing optoelectronics you know you're familiar with this you can get even more specific about getting exactly the wavelength you want so you have the highest efficiency possible so the good news is these are in stock yeah well there was 997 when I took the screenshot yes there could be less so these come in tape-and-reel you'll probably want to use a heat synced aluminum PCB with these they do get quite hot we don't have a video but I do have a demo I do a live demo yeah I can do a live demo okay so okay so here is my UV LED and as you can see here it's quite it's quite bright I have it just soldered on to a two wires and you can see another nice thing about these compared to CCFL or even a five millimeter is how precise that the point is and it's very even so I've got some UV resin here I was using this to do keycap stuff and you can see I did a couple tests earlier okay so you're gonna but you put a little bit of here and it's liquid okay yeah so you can it's liquid we agree and then you shine a UV LED on top of you see the liquid liquid okay shine the UV LED yeah be entertaining for a few minutes maybe I don't know well so someone looked it up yeah Disney did have something to do with ghosts in the shell yeah and then I made up my own quote because someone said distribution yeah not ownership and I said but distribution is ownership is 99% and I'm tense of the law to Dune which they never said in Dune but I'm just gonna make it up now okay so let's see it's only been a couple seconds but you'll um you'll actually be able to feel it's warm when it's cured because there's a it's exothermic okay and then when you touch it it's no solid it's solid so that's how fast it cures very very effective so now this is a solid chunk of hardened resin and yes it's a little bit warm okay because of that but yeah this is super cool and really fast so I remember we put this under a fluorescent bulb when we were curing keycaps and it took you know like 15 minutes this is like 20 seconds yeah it's extremely powerful do be careful with these I mean they look white but they're definitely a fluorescent you can also see I mean you can't really see yeah I mean I can see the fluorescent color oh cool my my fingernail looks cool anyways so these UV LEDs they're super nifty and they're pick and place of also very easy and very small so good for your product design okay and that is this week's Ion API