For two decades, The University of California Santa Barbara has been developing LED lights for homes, winning the lead researcher a Nobel Prize.
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More recently, the project turned its focus to cleaning.
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Researchers originally started to use UV light to disinfect water, but since the COVID-19 pandemic, they're trying to use the same technology to disinfect personal protective equipment or even air and water from the coronavirus.
"That's what we do. We increase the efficiency and the power in the lights," UCSB Professor of Materials Steve DenBaars said.
"So as the efficiency and power of the lights increases the time required to disinfect goes down. And in one case I saw they were able to disinfect an entire surface in 30 seconds."
If the National Institutes of Health confirms it works, it could eventually be used to clean even more.
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