This old news item popped up in this thread today. I recall reading that news item at the time, and actually getting excited at the prospects. But ST Micro Electronics appears pretty mum on the issue, and their news archive only goes back a couple months.
Judging from the state of their stock, it would appear to me that there has been a pronounced lack of interest in STM since the beginning of this year. Was the PVL announcement a hoax? Did they retract or hedge their statemements at some point? Has anyone kept abreast of the developments here?
bonus points if you can update me on the Turkey guts electricity plant and the Spider Goat mutants
I dont know anyting about that company in particular, but a lot about the technology in general. There is no problem in making cheapish organic (or plastic) PV cells such as ST microelectronics is proposing. there are probably 50 groups and companies around the world doing work in this area. The leading technology seems to be Gretzel cells (sensitised Titania) but many others are possible. Efficiencies are still too low (say 2-5%) and have difficulty capturing all of the suns spectra. The main problem is lifetime (the sun is very good at destroying or bleaching organic materials).
I suspect this was a publicity release from a research subgroup within the company trying to justify its existance. Happens all the time and you know that only 5-10% pan out to anything significant in the future.