TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - INORGANIC CHEMISTRY - Preferred Method: The wires are patterned in the substrate using a deep reactive ion etching process. The substrate is doped with either an n-type or a p-type dopant. The emitter layer is doped with either an n-type dopant, if the substrate is doped with a p-type dopant, or a p-type dopant, if the substrate is doped with an n-type dopant. The spheres are in a liquid suspension, and the method further comprises depositing the spheres onto the substrate using a spin-on technique. The spheres are trimmed using oxygen plasma etching. The method further comprises cleaning the wires to remove surface damage due to the deep reactive ion etching process. The step of forming the emitter layer on the wires further comprises: diffusing an n-type or p-type dopant onto the wires from a dopant source, where the dopant source is a spin-on-glass dopant source or gas phase dopant precursor; and depositing an n-type or a p-type semiconductor material on the wires, where the n-type or p-type semiconductor material is deposited on the wires using evaporation, sputtering or epitaxial growth. The top contact electrode and the bottom contact electrode are deposited using metal evaporation, electroplating or screen printing. The spheres comprise at least one functional group on a surface of it, where the method further comprises functionalizing a surface of the substrate onto which the monolayer of spheres is deposited with a group complementary to the functional group on the surface of the spheres to increase adhesion of the spheres and the substrate. Preferred Components: The substrate is a silicon substrate. The emitter layer is doped with the n-type or p-type dopant to a concentration of 1x 1019-1x 1021 cm3. The top contact electrode comprises indium-tin-oxide and at least one of aluminum, copper, nickel, titanium, palladium, silver or gold. The bottom contact electrode comprises at least one of aluminum, copper, nickel, titanium, palladium, silver or gold. The spheres comprise carboxyl functional groups on the surface of it and the surface of the substrate is functionalized with amino-silane (3-(2-aminoethylamino)propyl) trimethoxysilane.    TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - POLYMERS - Preferred Components: The spheres comprise polystyrene latex nanospheres and/or microspheres. EXAMPLE - No suitable example given.