FYI,

"Micron-Sized Solar Cells Beat Wafer-Sized Cells
- Sandia National Labs recasts solar industry with MEMS"
EE Times
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID"2100026

: Sandia National Labs has harnessed silicon's natural tendency to
: grow into islands and used micro-electro-mechanical systems
: techniques to free those islands into the world's smallest solar
: cells.

: Sandia claims the micron-sized solar cells are as efficient as
: their wafer-sized big brothers, but consume only one hundredth the
: amount of semiconductor.

: Rather than force solar cells to grow across an entire wafer in a
: perfect crystalline lattice, and throw the whole wafer away if any
: imperfections develop, Sandia National Labs has found that smaller
: is better.

: Measuring just 100 microns round and just 14-to-20 microns thick
: including electrodes the tiny solar cells resemble snowflakes,
: but can be ganged together in parallel to provide whatever current
: generation capacity required by an application.

: In addition, they can also be wired in series to generate high
: voltages that are impossible with conventional solar cells. In the
: space required for 12 volts from a traditional solar cell, hundreds
: of volts can be generated by micron-sized solar cells wired in
: series.

: Sandia also claims their solar cells small size would allow them to
: be affixed to flexible surfaces, even clothing, turning almost any
: surface into a solar panel.

: In tests, Sandia demonstrated that a conventional pick-and-place
: robot can assemble about 130,000 of the tiny solar cells per hour
: over several square meters at a cost of approximately one-tenth of
: a cent per cell.

: Funding was provided by the Department of Energy's Solar Energy
: Technology Program and Sandia National Laboratory's Directed
: Research & Development program.

Mark Reiff