They seem to be able select re radiation frequencies:
Something like this might work for better solar PV.
One goal would be to re radiate the IR at a frequency that the PV could use for power generation.
Another goal would be to just cool the PV. PV loses up to 20% of its efficiency in the summer heat. If it could re radiate IR and reflect the frequencies it does not use for power generation the efficiency could remain high.
Bret Cahill
As far as I can tell, since the article has a very high hype to fact ratio, the material is simply stuff that's reflective in the visible and emissive in the atmosphere's IR windows.
In other words, it's colored. Whoop-te-do.
The important thing to note here is that it's (probably) not fluorescing
-- it's not gathering light at some long wavelength and generating light at a shorter wavelength that a PV could use. So there's no "re-radiate at a frequency that the PV could use" -- if it's in intimate thermal contact with the PV, and hot enough to radiate at a certain wavelength, then by the laws of thermodynamics the PV is too hot to generate useful energy from those photons.
Based on another thread about this same stuff, that's an established technology of high-zoot PV's already.
-- Tim Wescott Wescott Design Services http://www.wescottdesign.com
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