Science

This is in the first paragraphs of the paper and it refers to exciton yield. It's excitons, not thermodynamic energy recovery.

On inspection, while this claim will produce oodles of wishful thinking, the issue will do absolutely zero to address the environmental, economic and practical limitations of this technology, even if were entirely possible to industrialize this benchtop work.

These are land use, material use, the well known but often ignored reality that energy demand and availability are not linked in technologies dependent on the weather and the time of day, etc.

Solar energy is not sustainable, no matter what chemistry and physics are involved.

Figure 4 in the full paper shows the (very scary) chemistry involved:



These structures are polyaromatic hydrocarbons, powerful carcinogens that are constituents of air pollution and other chemical pollutants associated with petroleum and coal. They are decidedly not synthetically accessible on an industrial scale I would think.

It's a little late for wishful thinking. Solar energy will never be as clean nor as sustainable as nuclear energy, not in this form, not in any form.

It's a fantasy that should be allowed to die a deserved death.