PV "breakthroughts" are a dime dozen. Usually things quickly break apart due to these reasons: 1) The solar cell has to stable for 20 years in the field, not t

PV "breakthroughts" are a dime dozen. Usually things quickly break apart due to these reasons: 1) The solar cell has to stable for 20 years in the field, not the 5 minutes it requires to collect the data for your publication. 2) You have to make 200 million cells per year with a yield >98%. Can you really do that? 3) Manufacturing cost on paper and in reality are two completely different things. Reducing material consumption is good, but it is not the only cost driver. Again: YIELD. The first point is something that can be partially answered with a lot of additional research. Doable by a university, but often much more frustrating than the research they'd really want to do. The only answer to the last two points is to try it on a large scale. And people did that for many technologies, see Nanosolar, Solyndra and many more. The problem is that so many failed, that currently nobody is willing to invest in new PV technologies. Right now there is only silicon, CIGS thing film and CdTe thin film on the market. I doubt that a new technology is going to become relevant anytime soon as all of these technologies still have some room to breathe. The article mentions, that 15 years passed without a new efficiency record in Si based solar cells. This is completely meaningless until that number is approached by mass manufactured cells.