Applications of capacitive and barrier discharge excilamps in photoscience

The properties of ultraviolet (UV) and vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation produced by excimer and exciplex molecules are presented. The use of excimer and exciplex molecules in various discharges offers several merits. Therefore, effective and bright UV and VUV sources can be created. The characteristics of several typical excilamps (excimer and exciplex lamps) are described. The extraordinary characteristics of excilamps led to a lot of applications, which had been demonstrated in a number of recent studies.This review is dedicated to advances in application of UV/VUV electrodeless capacitive and barrier discharge excilamps in photoscience (i.e. in photochemistry, photobiology and photomedicine), namely, applications for oxidation and mineralization of organic substrates; VUV-initiated photodimerization and removal of water from hydrocarbon gas mixtures; UV inactivation of biological systems; UVB phototherapy of skin diseases; applications for inorganic analyses of environmental samples and for UVB/UVC photoregulation of plants. Further, tendencies in the development of excilamps and accompanying technologies are presented.