I want to hope this is not yet another ground-breaking announce in solar energy that we will never hear about again.

Is it really a new idea? (1, 2, ...) - and I'm not even asking if it's economically viable and durable from long-term perspective.

When you are close to a developing technology such as solar, or phones for instance, it's hard to see the impact of breaking developments. If however you step back and look where the technology has come from and where it's going, a pattern emerges that shows a stead state progression toward higher efficiency and lower cost over time. http://en.wikiped...ar_cell.

http://rawcell.com

For this experiment, gold nanorods were capped with a layer of crystalline titanium dioxide decorated with platinum nanoparticles, and set in water. A cobalt-based oxidation catalyst was deposited on the lower portion of the array.

Gold, cobalt, platinum? Does seem a bit expensive if one were to scale it up. I'm thinking that replacing these materials with less costly ones might impact the efficiency/stability in a negative way.

Still. It's certainly something to follow up on.

Odd how the efficiencies are almost never mentioned in these articles.

Don't worry, there will be plenty of these elements once Martini and Rossi figure out how to get their E-Cat device to work.

"Gold, cobalt, platinum?" - Antialias

But of course when there will be E-cats, then demand for solar tech will diminish.