“Picture a polymer object that folds into a boat when it touches liquids. Now—imagine this vehicle propelling itself using skylight. Finally, it would change colour when detecting harmful pollutants.”

Jeroen Sol is a doctoral candidate in the Stimuli-responsive Functional Materials & Devices (SFD) group under Prof Albert Schenning and Dr Michael Debije. Like a large part of the group, Jeroen works on materials based on (self-assembling) liquid crystalline materials and in specific their viability and potential as building blocks for stimuli-responsive 3D printable materials. The possibilities for these novel materials are endless and as such the project will look at the usability of these in the broadest way possible, from energy-related to sensing, and biomedical technology.

Jeroen has been a child of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) ever since the start of his academic career. First contact with SFD was made in 2015 during completion of the Bachelor’s degree with a project on “Cholesteric Liquid Crystal-based Optical Sensors” under the supervision of Monali Moirangthem MSc and Prof Albert Schenning. After a year of specialisation (Molecular Systems and Materials Chemistry master track), a graduation project titled “Colour Modulation in Luminescent Solar Concentrators for Agricultural Purposes” was carried out in close cooperation with Prof Albert Schenning and Dr Michael Debije. Four-and-a-bit months were spent with Dr Susana Torrón (Long Term Research) at Becker Industrial Coatings AB in Märsta (Sweden) to do an industrial internship, after which Jeroen completed his Master of Science degree cum laude.