Congratulations to Oliver Htway for winning CAMP award
On 2/23/2026, Oliver was awarded by California Alliance for Maximixing Potential (CAPM) in Irvine and placed 1st in engineering category.
Plaque photo and poster PDF:
Poster PDF: PDF poster (updated)
His HGDrone project poster info:
Development of a UV C LED based cold vapor fluorescence detector for field deployable mercury sensing
Atmospheric mercury is a persistent neurotoxin, yet high sensitivity field measurements still rely on bulky, power intensive cold vapor fluorescence analyzers that are difficult to deploy outside controlled laboratory environments. This project addresses the challenge of developing a compact, low power mercury detector whose behavior is quantitatively understood well enough to guide safe, linear, and sensitive operation.
We are designing a UV C LED based cold vapor fluorescence system in which a 254 nm LED illuminates a mercury bearing flow cell through a light pipe and baffle assembly, and the resulting fluorescence is measured with a photomultiplier tube and low noise analog front end. To characterize the coupled optical electronic dynamics without relying solely on first principles modeling, we perform data driven system identification in MATLAB. Step and swept sine experiments provide input output data for fitting low order transfer function or state space models that capture gain, bandwidth, dominant time constants, and the onset of saturation. Early ARX & OE fits indicate weak validation and non-white residuals, pointing to unmodeled multiphase dynamics and timing offsets that will require refined preprocessing and phase aware excitation in future trials.
Preliminary results include completion of a literature survey on UV C LED excited mercury fluorescence, definition of the optical geometry, and first pass LED driver and PMT readout schematics. These establish feasible operating ranges and identify likely noise sources in the measurement chain, forming the basis for planned refinement of the dynamic model and hardware parameters.
By integrating experimental system identification with hardware design, this project aims to reduce design iterations and support eventual deployment of a portable, lower power mercury analyzer for environmental sensing and future field platforms.
Created on 3/5/2026 by Prof. YangQuan Chen. Last updated: 3/5/2026.
