Quick! Lets knock down all the forests and spread this stuff out so we can save the environment with solar power.
Full spectrum? Way cool! The only problem might be electrocuting yourself while fixing the roof (grin).
No more recharging cell phones.
One problem is efficiency. The energy produced from photovoltaic energy available for heating would be les that the amount of energy from the sun heating your house directly. There is only so much energy available per square inch irradiated.
What this technology could add, provided it is transparent in the visible, is be coupled in a layered system so one layer captures IR and passes the visible light to the visible sensitive solar cell so more energy can be captured per square area than one type of cell by itself. Vice versa if the visible cell is transparent in the IR.
Heating can be done more efficiently by allowing the sunlight in without converting it first to electricity. Cooling and running appliances requires conversion.
More likely is reducing the need for throwaway batteries. This is a real mess. Any way to run portable gadgets on alcohol or solar power is desirable. I have a solar powered Citizen watch that supposedly will run for decades with a battery change.
Yeah, but at 6% efficiency, you will have to have a collector bigger than your house or PDA. It will take more than 5 years to get that efficiency up to the 35% that nukes runs at currently. Practical solar PV will always be just around the corner, just like practical fusion power.
Imagine the paint on your car powering your car's air conditioner while you are in the store and your engine is off.
Still, I have to ask, what do you do when the sun don't shine? Where I live, now, I don't think we've seen a peek of sunshine for what seems to be going on weeks. We've had plenty of snow and ice and rain in the meantime. I sure wouldn't want to be dependent on a solar array, no matter how efficient, for my main energy source during this time. People have had a hard enough time dealing with electricity outages of a day or two. Stretch that out to a few weeks and you're probably looking at significant numbers of fatalities.