National Taiwan University (NTU) Bachelor's Thesis Award is a school-wide competition for undergraduate students. This competition aims to encourage undergraduate students to actively participate in research work as to cultivate their independent thinking and problem-solving abilities. 張宗旻, a Junior student from our department first won the highest honor of gold medal in The 2023 Contest of Special Projects with the topic of "Development of a Long-Term, Real-Time, and Remote Heavy Metal Monitoring System in Solution by Plasmas Modulated Using Raspberry Pi" held by our department earlier this year. She then proceeds to participate in The 2023 Bachelor's Thesis Award Competition held by NTU and won the highest "傅斯年 Award" (she is one of the six winners in the school) with the topic of "Development of a Long-Term, Real-Time, and Web-based Heavy Metal Water Monitoring System Using Plasma Spectroscopy". In her work, plasma spectroscopy is used to analyze metallic elements in solution, and the imposture of Raspberry Pi, an open-source Linux mini-computer, allows for long-term, real-time, and remote control of the system in a flexible and low-cost manner. By applying a high pulsed voltage to the electrode immersed in the solution, plasma can be ignited, and metallic elements are tested using the optical emission of the plasma. Raspberry Pi is used to simultaneously modulate the width of high voltage pulses, ignite plasma, trigger the spectrometer, and acquire spectra. Such an arrangement allows for precise synchronization of pulses and spectrometer, which significantly improves the overall quality of the aquired spectroscopic data. Moreover, it is shown that this detection system is reliable since proper high voltage pulse width is selected and set prior to every detection, this guarantees the choosing of an optimal pulse width for every solution in a wide range of pH and conductivity. Raspberry Pi also acts as an HTTP web server in this setup to provide a friendly user interface and a more secure connection. With the flexibility of programming on Raspberry Pi, the detection process is designed such that different detection modes can be imposed on demand.
Attachement is the winners of The 2023 Bachelor's Thesis Award.
The figure below is 張宗旻's work when participating The 2023 Contest of Special Projects.
