Comment Re:What economic use? (Score 1) 38
The only way I can see that one wins on cost with this technology is if one has electronics that are so low-powered that they can be powered by an amorphous solar cell with an area equal to that of the circuitry itself. If you need a point of reference on the practicality of this requirement, I point you to your average solar-powered calculator, which has a solar cell area of several cm^2, and an active circuit area of probably less than 5 mm^2.
According to the press release from University of Twente, they will use amorphous silicon or CIGS layers deposited on top of the integrated circuit. A pretty average amorphous silicon solar cell will produce 6 mW/cm^2 in full sunlight, and about 0.5 mW/cm^2 indoors. A CIGS cell, especially on such a small scale, could probably come close to tripling those figures (one of the biggest problems in realizing high CIGS cell efficiencies in mass production is getting layers of uniform quality over large areas, an issue that would be dodged in this case).
The press release from Twente says the power requirement is "well below 1 mW"; if you assume the actual requirement is 0.1 mW and you use CIGS cells then you could probably still get enough power to run the circuit indoors on 6-7 mm^2 area. That doesn't seem out of line to me, but then I'm a solar cell designer, not an IC designer....