Two advances make it possible. The team, led by founder Lars Samuelson (a Lund University professor), created a technology known as Aerotaxy, which makes it cheaper to make nanomaterials. With that, they are creating gallium arsenide nanowires that can serve as solar collectors and that they can integrate directly into solar wafers, known as solar cells. The smarts happens at the atomic level.

[…] manufacturers don’t have many options for bringing down the costs of solar. […] The cells themselves must become more efficient to lower costs.