NOVELTY - Method for forming wires (1) involves providing catalytic seed particles (2) suspended in gas, providing gaseous precursors (3, 4) having constituents of wires to be formed, and growing the wires from catalytic seed particles in gas-phase synthesis including gaseous precursors while catalytic seed particles are suspended in gas, where gaseous precursors comprises semiconductor materials, thus forming semiconductor wires. The method further involves depositing and/or aligning wires on substrate in continuous process along substrate.    USE - For manufacturing wires useful in wire based semiconductor devices such as solar cells, field effect transistors, light emitting diodes, thermoelectric elements, field emission devices and nano-electrodes for life sciences.    ADVANTAGE - The method provides wires that enable large scale process combined with high structural complexity and material quality comparable to wires formed using substrate-based synthesis. In-situ analysis to monitor and/or to sort particles and/or wires formed enables efficient process control. The diameter of wires is partly determined by size of the catalytic particles, thus diameter of wires can be controlled by choosing appropriate size or size distribution of catalytic seed particles and by adjusting growth conditions to size of catalytic seed particles. The method provides continuous, high through-put, process for manufacturing aligned wires that can be grown at a surprisingly high rate on substrate, optionally with 'real-time' feed-back control to obtain high quality wires, which can be used in devices that can outperform conventional devices based on planar technology.    DETAILED DESCRIPTION - An INDEPENDENT CLAIM is included for system for forming wires comprising reactor for growing wires, where system comprises device for providing catalytic seed particles suspended in gas to reactor, device for providing gaseous precursors that comprises constituents of wires to be formed to reactor; and device for collecting wires grown from catalytic seed particles in gas-phase synthesis including gaseous precursors while catalytic seed particles are suspended in gas.    DESCRIPTION OF DRAWING(S) - The figure shows schematic view of axial growth of nanowire.    Wires (1)    Catalytic seed particles (2)    Gaseous precursors (3, 4)