During his Nobel Lecture at Stockholm University in Sweden, Alan Heeger pulled out a personal digital assistant and held it up so the crowd could marvel at its brilliant display screen. Heeger shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the materials that made this screen possible: electrically conductive plastics. What he didn't hold up, though, was an application of those same new materials that could have a far greater impact. Instead of conducting electricity and emitting light, as they do in flat-panel displays, these same plastics can be made to run the reverse process, absorbing light and producing electricity. If they work, they could fulfill the dream of many energy researchers: inexpensive solar cells.

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