Materials

Interesting how people can design materials. A new nanopillar sounds incredible.
However, if we are going to use solar energy on a large scale, should we not stick with silicon and that too amorphous?
Otherwise the problems created by large scale disposal of Ge, Cd, Sb, Te etc is going to be the next problem we create.
Amorphous silicon uses less energy to manufacture.
I think people should tweak the a-Si and come up with better efficiencies for large scale uses, grid integration etc and keep the other elements for specialist uses.