MSC.

INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY ENGINEERING

NOVEL MATERIALS

MATERIALS SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

IN
RENEWABLE ENERGY AREA
By

Bruno Pereira Franco

20070520

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MSC. INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY ENGINEERING

15/04/2016

DECLARATION
The work submitted in this report is the results of the candidates own investigations and
has not been submitted for any other award. Where use has been made of the work of other
people it has been fully acknowledged and referenced.

Student Name

______________

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... ii
Chapter 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1
Chapter 2 Solar Cells: Generations and Materials .............................................................. 2
2.1 Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells ................................................................................. 2
2.2 Thin-Film Solar Cells............................................................................................... 4
Chapter 3 Self-Healing Materials for Wind Turbine .......................................................... 7
3.1 Incorporation of Self-healing Materials ................................................................... 8
Chapter 4 Thermal Energy Storage with Phase Change Materials ................................... 11
4.1.1 Incorporation of PCM .................................................................................... 12
4.1.2 PCM Thermal Enhancement .......................................................................... 13
Chapter 5 Conclusions and Recommendations................................................................. 14
Chapter 6 Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 15

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 Polystyrene Nanospheres with Ag coating in Silicon Wafer: SEM image (left) and
diagram (right) (Xu, et al., 2016) ........................................................................................ 3
Figure 2 Nanosphere Lithography Process [From (Colson, et al., 2013)] .......................... 3
Figure 3 CSS system diagram [From (Pinheiro, et al., 2006)] ........................................... 5
Figure 4 Chemical Bath Deposition [From (Singh, 2014)] ................................................ 6
Figure 5 CdTe solar cell with all layers [From (http://www.nrel.gov/pv/thinfilm.html)] .. 6
Figure 6 Self-healing process [From (Hager, et al., 2010)] ................................................ 8
Figure 7 Self-Healing Microcapsules (a) and Hollow-Fibre (b) ......................................... 8
Figure 8 Microcapsules with average diameter [From (Li, et al., 2012)] ............ 9
Figure 9 Diameter Hollow Glass Fibres [From (Trask, et al., 2007)]................... 10

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Chapter 1 Introduction
Materials science is considered one of the most important fields of study nowadays.
It studies the relationship between structure and properties of materials, and works in
expanding knowledge of the materials by setting their potential use and limitations. It aims
to develop materials that have the better performance, durability, properties, and cost for
different applications. And today, with the capability to examine and modify materials at
molecular level the interest for this area became greater, it is allowing the development of
advanced materials (with enhanced properties and smart reaction to external stimulus).
Material science can be applied to guarantee improvements in all types of fields, such as
transportation (engine efficiency), clothes (thermal control), construction (smart
structures), medicine and medical devices (manmade materials that mimic biological
materials for the use in implants) and many others. The field that will be analysed in this
report is the renewable energy.
At a time when the consumption of electricity has increased, and that a progressive
general awareness of the environmental impacts of fossil fuel use arises, it becomes
imperative a bet on clean energy sources, sustainably produced. Thus, investment in
renewable energy has been gaining momentum, driven by European directives stipulate
that an incorporation of renewable energy from the electrical system. Renewable Energy
is a wide area including many different technologies such as wind turbines, solar cells,
hydroelectric, energy storage systems, biofuels, marine energy technologies, etc.
Many advances in renewable energy technologies were possible only because of
the study of material science. Researches have been conducted to enhance the performance
of renewable energy technologies with focus on material science. The focus of this report
is to present some of these researches as case studies. Chapter 2 present advances that
materials science underpinned in the first two generations of solar cell. Chapter 3 describes
the use of self-healing materials in wind turbine blades. Chapter 4 shows the importance
of phase change materials for thermal energy storage. Chapter 5 brings the report
conclusion. It is important to notice that the description of how the renewable energy
technologies work is not in scope of this report.

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Chapter 2 Solar Cells: Generations and Materials

Solar cells are responsible to take incoming light energy and convert it to electrical
energy (the photoelectric effect). Nowadays, there are at least 3 generations of solar cells,
the crystalline silicon solar cells, the thin-film solar cells, and many technologies form the
third generation of solar cells. In all these 3 generations there is a continue research, which
is mainly focused in material science, to improve efficiency and reduce production costs.
This chapter is focused in the use of materials science in the first two generations, it
includes the use nanostructures to enhance the light absorption of crystalline silicon cells,
and the process to create cadmium telluride thin-film solar cells.

2.1 Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

The first generation of solar cells, the crystalline silicon, or c-Si, uses silicon as its
main material. Silicon can be consider the most relevant material for solar cells due to its
long history with the technology and it has the best semiconductor properties to be used in
this application. The silicon is not found in its isolated and native state, it appears in some
minerals in the form of silicon dioxide (SiO2), also known as silica (as in amethyst, the
agate, quartz, sand, etc.) and other minerals in the form of compounds containing silicon,
oxygen and metals known as silicate (in clay, feldspar, granite, on mica, etc.). Silicon is
the main component of glass, cement, ceramics, and most of the semiconductor component,
as well as silicones, plastics substances that are often confused with silicon.
There are two types of crystalline structures, the monocrystalline, which represents
the most efficient solar cells, however it has the most expensive and energy intensive
production process; and the polycrystalline, which presents decrease in the efficiency,
however the production process is less costly. There are many process, or methods, to
create the silicon crystals, such as, the Czochralski (CZ) and Float Zone Silicon (FZ) for
the creation of monocrystalline silicon (details can be found in Meroli, 2012); and the
directional solidification (DS) and electromagnetic casting (EMC) for the creation of
polycrystalline silicon (detail can be found in www.siliconsultant.com/simulticrs.htm).
Current c-Si cell have low absorption of the near infrared light (exceeding 800nm
wavelength). A possible upgrade in c-Si solar cells is the use of nanosphere-embedded
metallic grating structure to improve light absorption. Nanosphere lithography was used to

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create hexagonal distributed polystyrene nanospheres embedded in silver (Ag coating) in

the rear surface of the silicon wafer (Figure 1). The Ag coating forms the grating structure
and acts as electrode (to collect electrical energy from the solar cell). This structure in the
rear part of the c-Si cell traps the light with higher wavelengths, which can enhances the
performance of the cell. The great advantage of this new method is the fact that it can be
integrated as final step of fabrication process, not adding any complication to it (Xu, et al.,
2016).

Figure 1 Polystyrene Nanospheres with Ag coating in Silicon Wafer: SEM image (left) and diagram (right) (Xu, et al., 2016)

Figure 2 Nanosphere Lithography Process [From (Colson, et al., 2013)]

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Two interesting aspects of this method described is the use of nanosphere

lithography to create the structure. Nanosphere lithography is a method nanomaterials,
nanostructures in different sizes. The method consists in two main steps, the mask
preparation and nanostructure creation; the entire process can be seen in Figure 2. In the
final step of the mask formation the 2D HPC lattice stands for the formation of a monolayer
or bilayer hexagonal-closed pack (Colson, et al., 2013).

2.2 Thin-Film Solar Cells

The second generation, the thin film solar cells also use silicon but in its amorphous
(a-Si) form, however it can also be made with other materials, such as Gallium Arsenide
(GaAs) and Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) (www.energyinformative.org). These solar cells
use much less material compared with the first generation (10nm of film thickness
compared with 200nm wafer thickness). With less material usage and less expensive
production process these cells are an alternative to crystalline silicon cells, however the
efficiency is lower (8% in commercialized products) since they cannot absorb the same
quantity of light as c-Si cells (www.energy.gov).
One important characteristic of these cells is their manufacturing process, which
can be made in mass production (1 module per minute) and much less energy intensive
compared with c-Si. There are different methods and technologies depending on the type
of the thin-film solar cell. CdTe has been seen as the best thin-film solar cell technology
(7% of the worlds market) and the methods to produce the thin-film include close-spaced
sublimation (CSS), vapor-transport deposition, physical-vapor deposition, sputter
deposition, electrodeposition, metal-organic chemical-vapor deposition (CVD), spray
deposition, and screen-print deposition (www.energy.gov).
CSS is considered a good deposition method to growth CdTe in a substrate because
it works with not so high temperatures and can be implemented for in-line production. In
this technique, the source and the substrate are separated by a distance of millimeters by
quartz spacers. Graphite blocks serve as support for source and for substrate, and serve to
transport heat that is provided by visible or infrared lights facing the blocks.
Thermocouples serve to monitor the temperature of the graphite blocks, which is important
since the temperature difference between source and substrate determines the material
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transfer between both (Figure 3). The process itself start with the heating of the source
material until it generate a required amount of vapor. In the surface of the substrate, which
is in a temperature lower than the source, the vapor condense. It allow the use of different
substrates, such as polymers, metals and glasses, and the use of different dopants for the
source (to enhance the efficiency of the cell) (Seth, et al., 1999).

Figure 3 CSS system diagram [From (Pinheiro, et al., 2006)]

The process of fabrication the CdTe cell include seven steps. The first is preparation
of the substrate, which stands for cleaning it to avoid impurities in the cell (different
cleaning methods can be found in Snyder, 2000).
Secondly is necessary to create the frontal electrical contact of the cell, by adding
a transparent conducting oxide (TCO) (electrical conductive material with low absorption
of light characteristic). Tin Dioxide (SnO2) and Indium Tin Oxides (ITO) are both good
options for TCO in CdTe cells, the first one can be applied to the substrate using CVD
techniques and the second one by sputtering deposition process (Singh, 2014).
The next layer of the cell is the deposition of CdS layer that can be done the
chemical bath deposition (CBD), which gives the cell a better performance; however, it is
not proper for mass production processes, so CSS can also be used. Figure 4 shows the
CBS process for a substrate with ITO TCO coating, where the substrate is dipped in
deionized water at temperature around 87. Different chemical compounds are added
separately in the water, which result in the deposition of CdS (Singh, 2014). The next step
is the addition of the CdTe layer that can be done with the CSS method. Then it is necessary
to treat the CdTe layer for the addition of the back contact and finally the addition of the
back contact (detail for the entire process can be found in Britt & Ferekides, 1993).
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Figure 4 Chemical Bath Deposition [From (Singh, 2014)]

Figure 5 CdTe solar cell with all layers [From (http://www.nrel.gov/pv/thinfilm.html)]

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Chapter 3 Self-Healing Materials for Wind Turbine

One may think that wind energy would not be dependent on the materials science
to achieve a better performance (efficiency), since it is based on a mechanical process
different of the chemical process of the other renewable energy from the last chapter,
however, this is not truth. Just modifying the design of the blades, or improvements in the
electro-mechanical conversion are not the only ways to improve the performance of this
device. Increase in the wind turbine blade length, which is normally made of polymers
(carbon-fibre/epoxy, carbon fibre/polyester or glass reinforced thermoset), can guarantee
that the turbine will extract more power from the wind, thus more efficient, however
problems with the blade weight and the risk of fracture not allow this advance. The
development of light and resistant materials may not be enough to achieve this
improvement. Fatigue failure can happen due to micro and nanocracks that are formed in
the blade due to external cyclical loadings, which decreases the turbine life-cyle. One
solution to this problem is the use introduction of self-healings materials in the blade
manufacturing process (Patlolla & Asmatulu, 2012).
Wind turbine structural and blade failures represent more than 23% of the cases,
and it is important to notice that the accidents were not just in storms or strong wind
conditions (Lu, 2014). Damage in the wind blades is not only a problem for the efficiency
and turbine lifetime, but it can be a critical safety problem for workers in the wind farm, or
depending on the situation for people living in the proximity of the device. Even with the
use of fibre-reinforced material is impossible to avoid damage caused by micro-cracks that
can propagate causing a major failure. Conventional repair methods are not able to fix
micro/nano-cracks, thus another approach is required (Amano, 2014).
Self-healing is a common property observed in biological materials (bones, animal
or vegetal tissues, etc) that were damaged by external mechanical load. The objective to
achieve self-healing property in man-made materials can allow the production of coating
with this property that would be used in any applications that have difficult access and are
made to have a long life-time, such as wind turbines, off-shore devices and others. The
basic process of self-healing can be seen in Figure 6, where after the material is damaged
with a micro or nano crack, then a mobile phase is generated, which is activated by an

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external stimulus (named non-autonomic self-healing materials) or as an automatic

response to the crack (named autonomic self-healing materials). Mass is transported to the
damaged region and the crack repair happens with physical and/or chemical reactions.
After the repair is completed the mobile material is immobilized, which can result in a
repaired main material with its full properties (best-case scenario). (Hager, et al., 2010)

Figure 6 Self-healing process [From (Hager, et al., 2010)]

A common self-healing agent for polymers is Dicyclopentadiene (DCPD), which

used as a monomer capable of fast polymerization. Grubbss catalyst is required in the
polymerization process (to increase the velocity of the chemical reaction). DCPD or any
other healing agent must be inside a container, which will release the agent when a damage
occurs. Chemical reactions including the breakage of DCPD bonds and the formation of
new bonds with the main material (bulk material) will guarantee the repair of the crack.
More details about the reactions of DCPD can be found in (Li, et al., 2012).

3.1 Incorporation of Self-healing Materials

Approaches to apply self-healing materials in wind turbine include: the use of selfhealing microcapsules or hollow-fibre (Figure 7) (Amano, 2014).

Figure 7 Self-Healing Microcapsules (a) and Hollow-Fibre (b)

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The microcapsules contain the healing material, which can be a monomer that is
released when the material suffer mechanical damage (breaking the wall of the capsule).
With the support of a catalyst agent the monomer would start the polymerization process
in the crack, repair the damage. One important engineering process related to materials
science can be highlight in the use of self-healing microcapsules, the microencapsulation
(Hager, et al., 2010).

Figure 8 Microcapsules with average diameter [From (Li, et al., 2012)]

In the technical report of Microtek laboratories Inc., microencapsulation is defined

as the process of surrounding or enveloping one substance within another substance on
a very small scale, yielding capsules ranging from less than one micron to several
hundred microns in size. There are many techniques used in microencapsulation such
as chemical techniques: Complex Coacervation, Interfacial Polymerization, and In situ
polymerization; and physical of mechanical techniques: Spray Drying, Fluid Bed
Coating, and Spinning Disk method. Details for each of these techniques can be found
in (Microtek Laboratories Inc., 2015).
The self-healing microcapsule works well, however it has the main drawback is the
fact that it could lead to an incomplete repair due to lack of material in the capsule
(Hager, et al., 2010).
One alternative to the use of self-healing microcapsule is hollow glass fibres. A
matrix of these hollow fibres, which can be seen as a tube system, is integrated in the
material. When the material is damaged, a fracture will release the self-healing materials
from the tubes. These are preferred due to the advantage capability to store self-healing

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material, plus easy integration in the main material system and plus the fact that it can
also act as a reinforcement (Trask, et al., 2007).

Figure 9 Diameter Hollow Glass Fibres [From (Trask, et al., 2007)]

One problem with both methods above is the fact that sometimes the external load,
which causes the micro or nano crack in the bulk material, not necessarily will cause the
required stress to promote the rupture of the microcapsule or hollow glass fibre wall. In
one attempt to solve this issue a recent method was developed to create a biomimetic
vascular system in wind turbines blades to allow the circulation of self-healing agent is
presented in Strong & Guo, 2015. The network is created by using 100 metal wires,
which are coated with release film. By using, the vacuum assisted resin transfer method
(VARTM, detail of the method can be found in
assisted-resin-transfer-molding-vartm)

https://www.rtmcomposites.com/process/vacuum-

the wires are removed from the bulk material interior, which

creates the complex matrix where the self-healing agent can be inserted (Strong & Guo,
2015).

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Chapter 4 Thermal Energy Storage with Phase Change

Materials
Energy storage systems play an important role to achieve a better use of the energy
from renewable sources. The best example to show the importance of these systems is in
solar energy, where the energy source (the sun) will be only available during the day, thus
it is required to store energy to use in the night time (assuming a closed system where only
solar energy is available). In off peak hours (during the night), wind energy continue to be
generated, and it can wasted if not properly stored. There are a number of technologies that
can be used in energy storage system, including thermal, compressed air, pumped hydropower, flywheels, flow batteries and solid state batteries (detailed information about the
working

process

of

each

one

of

these

technologies

can

be

found

in

www.energystorage.org). This chapter focus on thermal energy storage with the use of
phase change materials.
Thermal Energy Storage is a method that can provide heating or cooling of different
ambient (buildings, houses, cluster cooling, etc.) with the utilization of excess electrical
energy to heat or cool a storage system, or by capturing heat/cold from external sources
(sun, summer heat, winter cold, geothermal) and storing it. The energy stored can be
utilized in its thermal form and it would not return to electrical form (although there are
recent studies that try to use thermoelectric generator to transform the thermal energy
stored in electrical energy). The thermal energy can be stored as sensible heat, latent heat
or thermochemical, however in this work, only the latent heat storage will be analyzed
(www.irena.org).
Latent heat is the heat absorbed or released as result of a phase change
(www.physics.info/heat-latent/). In Latent Heat Storage, the thermal energy is stored in
latent mode by changing the state, or phase (solid-liquid-gas) of the storage medium, which
is normally a phase change material. Phase change material (PCM) absorbs and release
thermal energy in while changing their state, with the objective to maintain a regulated
temperature. The most used PCM materials for energy storage applications are the solidsolid type and the solid-liquid type, the use of any material that includes a gas phase is also
possible, but required a storage system more complex and expensive. Commercialized
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PCM are classified in organic (paraffins, fatty acids, polyglycols), inorganic (salt hydrates)
and eutectics (salt-water solutions) (http://www.microteklabs.com/what-is-a-pcm.html).
The most useful application of PCMs is in the energy storage for buildings.
Buildings consume almost 45% of the fossil energy, which contributes a lot for emissions
of greenhouse gases. Great part of this energy consumption is in ambient thermal control
(heating, cooling, and ventilation). One way to reduce this energy consumption is to use
PCM as latent heat storage. In this application, it is required PCMs that a have a phase
change temperature close the human thermal comfort (21 25.5), the most viable
option is the use of material with phase change temperature around18 30 (Zhou, et
al., 2012).
4.1.1 Incorporation of PCM

A great challenge in buildings application is how to integrate the PCM material

with the building material. Traditional methods include direct incorporation, immersion
and macroencapsulation, the first two methods present problems with reactions that may
occur with the direct contact of the PCM with the building material, the third method solve
the contact problem however has other disadvantages such as: low thermal conductivity
and difficult integration with building material (more detail for these 3 methods can be
found in Hawes, et al., 1993). Recent methods include microencapsulation and shapestabilized PCMs.
The microencapsulation is the same method used for self-healing materials in
Chapter 3; however, the microcapsules for PCM cannot fracture different from the
microcapsules for self-healing, in other words, the capsule must guarantee no leakage. The
great advantage of this method is to offer a good heat transfer coefficient that increases the
performance of the thermal storage. All the techniques listed in Chapter 3 can be used to
produce microencapsulated PCM (Zhao & Zhang, 2011).
Other way to incorporate PCM in buildings material is the use of shape-stabilized
PCM, which even if the melt point of the material is passed the shape is retained. In this
different type of materials, a supporting material (liquid polymer, normally high density
polyethylene, HDPE) and a dispersed PCM (normally paraffin) are used to form a stable
composite material. Both materials are melt and blended (higher the PCM concentration
better the thermal performance, the maximum achieved was of 85% PCM concentration),

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creating a polymeric PCM hybrid. The supporting material contain the PCM material using
capillary forces in their cellular structure. The good thermal properties and the fact that it
does not need a container for the material make shape-stabilized PCM interesting for the
use in many applications. Any shape can be achieved for these types of materials. Important
to notice that any material that can provide capillary forces to retain the PCM can be used
as supporting material, recent new shape-stabilized PCM uses graphene oxide (GO) to
improve thermal properties (more details can be found in Mehrali, et al., 2013) (Fleischer,
2015).
4.1.2 PCM Thermal Enhancement

The low thermal conductivity of PCMs is a disadvantage for energy storage

application, since it is required more time to absorb and release thermal energy. A relevant
technique to solve this problem and enhance PCM thermal conductivity is the use of
nanomaterials (nanoparticles, nanofibers, nanotubes and nanosheets) to create nanoenhanced PCMs (NEPCM). It is possible to use metallic or non-metallic nanomaterials for
this application, including copper, aluminum, carbon nanotubes, graphite nanofibers and
others. As in the shape-stabilized PCM, the concentration of any non-PCM material must
be as minimum as possible to maintain the main properties. The most used method to create
NEPCM is first to produce the nanomaterial and secondly to disperse this material in PCM
base fluid. Surfactants are used to guarantee stability of the new mixture. The main
objective is to increase the velocity of the phase change process, however any approach
must not over increase the weight of the overall material or the cost of production (Ma, et
al., 2016).

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Chapter 5 Conclusions and Recommendations

This report has stated the importance of materials science in renewable energy area
by presenting three different cases. It is possible to notice that the subject involves different
types of materials, nanostructures and process of manufacturing, thus a more extensive
work would be necessary for a full review of the most recent advances in the area.
Nevertheless, this mini-review was able to show some important advances.
In chapter 2, it was possible to see the use of material science studies to enhance
the perform of solar cells. In the first case, for the crystalline silicon solar cells a new
method to increase light absorption (trapping) of the cell is proposed by using a nanostructe
of polystyrene and silver in the rear part of the cell. In the second case, the production
process of cadmium telluride solar cells was reviewed, with focus in the close-space
sublimation technique to deposit thin layer of CdTe in a substrate.
In chapter 3, improvements in wind turbine structural health were shown with the
use of self-healing materials. The material mechanism was briefly explained and two
techniques to insert the material in the turbine blade were stated.
In chapter 4, the use of PCM for thermal energy harvesting was highlighted. It was
reported that the buildings sector is the best application for this material and techniques to
use the material were shown. In the end, the possibility to enhance the thermal conductivity
of the material using nanomaterial was explained.

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Chapter 6 Bibliography
Amano, R., 2014. Structural Consideration For Wind Turbine Blades. WIT Transactions
on State-of-the-art in Science and Engineering, Volume 81, pp. 161-179.
Britt, J. & Ferekides, C., 1993. Thinfilm CdS/CdTe solar cell with 15.8% efficiency.
Applied Physics Letters, Volume 62(22), pp. 2851-2852.
Colson, P., Henrist, C. & Cloots, R., 2013. Nanosphere lithography: a powerful method for
the controlled manufacturing of nanomaterials.. Journal of Nanomaterials, p. 21.
Fleischer, A., 2015. Thermal Energy Storage Using Phase Change Materials:
Fundamentals and Applications. s.l.:Springer.
Hager, M. et al., 2010. SelfHealing Materials. Advanced Materials, 22(47), pp.54245430., Volume 22(47), pp. 5424-5430..
Hawes, D., Feldman, D. & Banu, D., 1993. Latent heat storage in building materials.
Energy and buildings, Volume 20(1), pp. 77-86.
Li, Z., Morrison, C. & St. Laurent, E., 2012. Damage Detection in a Microencapsulated
Dicyclopentadiene

and

Grubbs

Catalyst

Self-Healing

System.

https://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-030415201853/unrestricted/MQP_Report_-_Li,_Morrison,_St._Laurent.pdf.
Lu, K., 2014. Materials in energy conversion, harvesting, and storage. s.l.:John Wiley &
Sons.
Ma, Z., Lin, W. & Sohel, M., 2016. Nano-enhanced phase change materials for improved
building performance. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 58, pp. 12561268.
Mehrali, M. et al., 2013. Shape-stabilized phase change materials with high thermal
conductivity based on paraffin/graphene oxide composite. Energy Conversion and
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Meroli,

S.,

2012.

Meroli.

Available

[Online]
at:

http://meroli.web.cern.ch/meroli/Lecture_silicon_floatzone_czochralski.html
[Accessed 2016].

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Microtek Laboratories Inc., 2015. Technical Overview: Microencapsulation, Dayton:

Microtek Laboratories Inc..
Patlolla, V. & Asmatulu, R., 2012. New progress in self-healing technology of composite
wind turbine blades. 9th Annual Capitol Graduate Research Summit.
Pinheiro, W., Falco, V., Cruz, L. & Ferreira, C., 2006. Comparative study of CdTe sources
used for deposition of CdTe thin films by close spaced sublimation technique. Materials
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Seth, A. et al., 1999. Growth and characterization of CdTe by close spaced sublimation on
metal substrates. Solar energy materials and solar cells, Volume 59(1), pp. 35-49.
Singh, V. P., 2014. The University Of Texas CdTe-Based Solar Cell Project. [Online]
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at:

http://www.ece.utep.edu/research/cdte/Fabrication/

[Accessed 13 04 2016].
Snyder, D. D., 2000. Preparation for Deposition. In: Modern Electroplating 4th Edition.
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Strong, S. & Guo, J., 2015. Development of Novel Self-Healing for use in Wind Turbine
Blades. http://dc.uwm.edu/uwsurca/2015/Poster2/12/.
Trask, R., Williams, G. & Bond, I., 2007. Bioinspired self-healing of advanced composite
structures using hollow glass fibres. Journal of the royal society Interface, Volume 4(13),
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