Does This Rhode Islander Have the Next Big Thing?
Friday, February 07, 2020
He grew up down the road from Wright’s Dairy Farm, the son of a CCRI professor, and made his way to Brown University, graduating with top honors.
He then headed to Europe for a successful career in politics and banking — before developing what could be one of the biggest technologies of the 21st century.
Sandy Chen is the founder of Graphene Composites, which "creates the strongest, lightest, most resilient materials in the world to manufacture life-changing products."
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAccording to Chen, this is achieved through combining graphene — the world’s strongest material — with aerogels, the lightest, most shock-absorbent materials ever developed.
The applications are limitless -- from body armor, to airplanes and boats, to wind turbines, and even quantum computing, Chen believes he has a product that could revolutionize building materials though its groundbreaking technology.
“[Graphene] is the world’s strongest substance. It’s roughly a hundred times stronger than steel. It’s also the world’s most conductive substance, about 20 times more conductive than copper,” said Chen.
“It’s when my wife and I were building our new — well, the builders were building our new — house, we were looking at insulating it with something called aerogel, which is the world’s lightest substance and best insulator,” said Chen. “And by the second bottle of wine, we began to say, what if you actually put the world’s strongest substance with the word’s best insulator -- maybe it’s the world’s best shock absorber as well -- could you make bulletproof armor?”
And the ideas haven’t stopped there.
“If you take the world’s lightest substance, and the world’s strongest substance — we thought, well, you could probably make really light aircraft," said Chen.
And Chen and his team, which launched Graphene Composites in the United Kingdom four years ago and GC USA in Providence in January 2019, see limitless possibilities.
This week, Chen met with the International Yacht Restoration School, as well as the Entanglement Institute in Newport, to talk about graphene’s potential — in quantum computing.
How The Technology Works
“This is our secret sauce,” Chen said when he appeared on GoLocal LIVE, showing the material. “You can feel how flimsy it is — you could break it apart with your fingers. It’s really like paper, but it does something called ‘hypersonic shear thickening.’ Shear thickening is a property that few substances have, which is the harder you hit, the harder it gets.”
“Ours is the only substance that we know of that has hypersonic shear thickening, which is that when you hit it with a bullet going three times the speed of sound — this particular sheet of graphene was hit with a sniper round that could take your head off at a mile — and what is left is a slight dent," said Chen, showing the bullet's impact on the material.
“And what it does, because it actually reflects the energy of the bullet back towards the bullet, it disintegrates the bullet if it’s going fast enough,” said Chen.
And Chen is committed to Rhode Island — and growing the company at a truly grassroots level.
“We haven’t been funded by a big venture capital firm. We’ve been funded by over 3,000 individual investors, including my father-in-law, two sisters-in-law, so you know, dinners are always a bit uncomfortable,” quipped Chen. “It’s a great way to live, actually, because if you just do what you want to do and deliver and tell the truth, it’s actually quite a satifsfying way to run the business.”
Chen plans to launch a major crowdfunding effort in the coming months — and is looking to procure a significant piece of equipment for his operations at Graphene Compositie’s USA manufacturing operation within the North East Knitting Complex in Pawtucket.
“If there’s anyone out there with a 1,000-ton heated press that might have been used to make a Navy warship…we’d love to buy it,” said Chen.
Editor's Note: Chen corrected following the interview that his father taught at the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI), not the University of Rhode Island.
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