ArQSensors is a University of Maryland 2026 National Science Foundation I-Corps team that conducted market research on quantum sensors that are capable of detecting magnetic fields, temperature, and pressure in extreme environments, making them a potential key asset to the nuclear power plant industry.

The team was awarded $50,000 to participate in the national NSF I-Corps Teams program, which features rigorous customer discovery training that guides researchers in determining the commercial potential of their innovations.

ArQSensors’ primary commercial target is nuclear power plants, with a broader eye on any extreme environment where today's sensors fall short: oil and gas, geothermal, nuclear fusion, space, aviation, maritime, and civil infrastructure.

Nuclear reactors and other energy facilities run their equipment under extreme conditions of high heat, radiation, and mechanical stress. Plant operators need to know about issues before they escalate. When equipment gets too hot or begins to wear down, conventional sensors can fail to alert operators in time. ArQ Sensors’ technology can withstand harsh environments and give plant operators a way to catch issues early.

The team's sensors use nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers, which are pairs of atomic defects engineered into custom-made diamond lattices, as the sensing element. When illuminated with a green laser, the NV centers emit red light, and when conditions in the surrounding environment change, so does the emitted light. The sensors use those changes in the emitted light to measure shifts in the environment's magnetic field, temperature, and pressure.

ArQ Sensors team members Kristine Ung, a physics Ph.D. student, and Xiechen Zheng, an electrical and computer engineering Ph.D. student, both came to I-Corps as researchers fluent in the underlying physics of quantum sensors, but were largely unfamiliar with how to translate that science into a business. The program gave them a framework for customer discovery, teaching them to ask unbiased questions that uncover real industry issues rather than simply validating what they already believed.

“We're both highly technical people who understand our quantum sensors well. But I-Corps takes technical people and makes them entrepreneurs, and so we learned a lot about customer discovery [and] how to engage with customers,” Ung said.

Customer discovery conversations reshaped how the team saw their market. They learned that introducing new sensor technology to safety-critical reactor equipment requires years of regulatory approval, but sensors on peripheral, non-safety systems can reach deployment much faster.

Because the core technology is diamond-based, making it chemically inert and mechanically tough, the sensor platform can be adapted to suit virtually any extreme environment with minimal reconfiguration. The team has identified potential applications in civil engineering, space technology, underwater submarine systems, and more.

"The cool thing about our sensors is the wide range of applications. We have a product, we have the base physics; all we need to do is understand the environment to be able to reconfigure our setup so that it can better suit the environment,” Ung said.

Beyond customer discovery, the team learned to ask better questions. Rather than presenting their technology and hoping customers would find a use for it, they learned to identify industry issues before deciding how their platform should be positioned or adapted.

Barry Ives served as the team's industry mentor, bringing over a decade of experience directing advanced technology programs at Lockheed Martin.

The diamond NV platform ArQSensors has built is applicable far beyond any single industry, and the commercial foundation I-Corps helped them lay will help it go far.

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