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I won't deny that there are trends in Science. Also, it's should be obvious that of all the applications for a new material that are imagined, only a few pan out. I say "obvious" because: (1) scientists are not omniscient, when a discovery is just starting up they mention all the things that could possibly come out of the research, but of course don't know which ones will work and which ones won't until they actually do the experiments; (2) as in any other field, there is pressure to justify one's funding, so there is certainly some hype and over-selling going on.

Having said all that, you need to keep some perspective. What is left of C60? Well there are commercial flexible solar cell products that you can buy today that use C60 in them. That's one example, there are probably more that I'm not aware of. Research is ongoing, and new applications will probably be discovered. As for nanotubes, they have not appeared in any products that I'm aware of, but give it time and I suspect they will be. Same goes for graphene.

Again, I'm not saying that every suggested application pans out. And you may well think that the huge research effort into carbon-base nanomaterials hasn't been worth it. But we're still at the very beginning of the emergence of this field, and it's already generate tangible results and products. My point is simply that it's not all hype.

your efficiency per square foot may be crap, but your square footage can be huge. That's assuming, of course, this stuff ends up being cheap. The manufacturing process should be ultra cheap, but I don't know about producing the solution. It should be a lot cheaper than traditional panels, but will it be cheap enough to make it worth it? That's the question.

That's exactly right. The promise of organic photo-voltaics is that they will be so much cheaper to produce that the lower efficiency won't matter. But one of the harsh realities is that a photo-voltaic setup has certain fixed base costs (think of how much it costs to physically install each 1 m^2 panel, and tie it into a house's electricity system). Thus, according to industry partners, there is actually an efficiently level below which a solar material is not worth using even if it were completely free to produce. So, for organic solar cells to become commercially viable, they need to improve efficiency, even while reducing costs. Of course we're now reaching levels where it is indeed viable to use organic photo-voltaics, see for example Konarka's flexible solar panel that is built into a bag, so that it charges your cellphone; but there is a threshold of efficiency necessary to offset fixed installation costs.

So what's the difference between this "Crafty Chick['s]" invention and the Umass (Lowell) developed "Power Plastics" which using inkjet printing (Roll to roll, actually), are being implemented by and are expected to be on the market by the end of 2008. Is it the use of nail polish that is the breakthrough or the pizza oven?

See http://www.konarka.com/ to learn more about their Power Plastic. Kicks traditional photovoltaic systems in the nuts.

Note the line "To date, the engineers have been using silicon switching elements to control the device. The objective now is to use a printing process to manufacture the entire display, including the appropriate control electronics, from conductive and semiconducting plastics." The idea of making semiconductor arrays in a printing press has been around for years, but nobody has done it successfullyin production. Siemens hasn't done it either. They're still making the substrate for this in a wafer fab, and it's a big chip. So this is still an expensive technology. It might get cheap, but we've heard that claim before about "e-paper" type technologies.

The "printing semiconductors" idea has been applied to solar cells. There are plenty of announcements of breakthroughs in this area, but somehow, nobody actually seems to be shipping product.

So this requires another breakthrough, and in an area where there have been few successes. It's not here yet.

A better technology has been created. "Solar Fabrics". Several companies are using "Nano-materials" based on titanium-oxide to do "roll to roll" printing of Solar-to-electric energy fabric. Cost is less, is much more rugged ,integrates with buildings better, more usable capture space. Yield not equal to Solar Panels, but it is new and is improving. It is likely to surpass traditional panels on a volts per unit of area basis.

Two companies already doing this: konarka and nanosolar:

One possible application: building materials (roofing, exterior siding) which can generate power.

http://www.konarka.com/ http://www.nanosolar.com/