Nano-Etching Breakthrough Could Deliver Cheaper Solar

Readers have probably noticed that, over the last month or so, we've been putting as much focus on the economy and overall market as we have on alt/clean/green tech. As we explained in "A change in the climate: credit crunch makes the bottom line the top issue" and "Green Energy Sings the Blues: Credit Crunch Hits Clean Tech, Too" we are convinced of the importance of this paraphrase of Chairman Mao statement:

..."The guerilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea" is that climate/energy investments swim in the larger sea of the markets....".

We've also had fewer posts that had no immediate insight into current conditions, the thinking being that the long term is composed of a series of short terms.
We're changing tack with this post, the technology involved could be a game changer and investors should be aware of it. From earth2tech:

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said this week that they’ve found a way to etch onto a chip lines less than 25 nanometers apart. This has huge implications for lowering costs across the chip industry, including for photovoltaic cells used in solar panels.

Chip makers are always striving to cram more transistors onto a chip in order to increase the processing abilities of a semiconductor. But at the same time, chip makers are also trying to put more chips on a wafer, so there’s a need to make the chips themselves smaller. It’s like putting more and more penguins on a shrinking iceberg....MORE