Dr. Jasper Michels
Jasper Michels studied Chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, where he graduated in Organic Chemistry in 1995. After a brief internship at DSM Resins in Zwolle he commenced his doctoral work in supramolecular chemistry at the University of Twente, where he received his PhD degree in 2001 on: “Cyclodextrin Assemblies based on Multiple Non-Covalent Interactions”. After his graduation he held a post-doctoral research position for two years at the group of Prof. H. L. Anderson at Oxford University. His work at Oxford was consecutively funded by the English Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and the EU’s Marie Curie Fellowship Association. In 2003 he took up a position as Research Scientist at TNO Science and Industry in Eindhoven (The Netherlands), and joined Holst Centre in 2006 in the role of Senior Scientist. In the period 2006 – 2016 Jasper has subsequently been board member and vice-chairman of the advisory board for IOP Self Healing Materials in The Netherlands. In September 2014 he joined the Department of Molecular Electronics of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research as a staff scientist.
Research Interests
Jasper’s research interest concerns the overlap between soft matter dynamics and functional systems, such as thin-film organic electronics. Polymeric semiconductors comprise a family of conjugated, semiflexible macromolecules that find application in thin-film devices such as light-emitting diodes, solar cells and memory diodes. The films are commonly processed from solution. During solvent evaporation phase transitions such as demixing and crystallization may occur. Using a combination of experimental and theoretical approaches his group attempts to gain a profound understanding of the coupling between the strongly out-of-equilibrium phase behavior of these multicomponent systems, thin film morphology and device performance. Jasper also explores possibilities of applying his methods and approaches work in life science, currently with a special focus on cellular phase separation phenomena.