The nanotechnology, what it does is it improves the efficiency of these solar cells by about 10,000 times

from a video from the National Defense Education Program:

10,000 times! He says it improves the efficiency 10,000 times!

"What we have here is a flexible solar cell. And it's a flexible solar cell that's only made possible through nanotechnology. Now you think of traditional solar cells—they're essentially giant pieces of silicon and they're made on glass. Well, this is very different from that. It's not made on glass. It's made on plastic, as you can see.

"Now, what we have here, it is nanostructured titanium dioxide with some organic(s) in there to absorb the light. The nanotechnology, what it does is it improves the efficiency of these solar cells by about 10,000 times. So you'll actually be able to go out and buy these flexible solar cells—maybe put them on your house—use them for other applications—but they'll be much cheaper than the solar panels you can get today."

—Joseph McDermott, Phd, nanomaterials scientist, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Well, plainly I don't know the details here, but the first thing I got on Google that contained "plastic based solar cells titanium dioxide organic" gave me this, which mentioned that efficiencies, as of 2006, were between .01 and .04%. A symposium in 2007 listed some not-quite-similar materials achieving 4-6% efficiency under some conditions. That's a several hundred percent improvement. Maybe the first non-nanostructured cells had unbelievably bad efficiencies, like .00001%. I don't know. It just seems like a 10,000 time increase is hard to imagine...