hole on the silicon surface as the electrochemical redox reaction proceeds the metal nanoparticles sink down further and remove underlying silicon finally silicon nanowires result from areas where no metal is present the second step 24 of the method 20 is to immerse the etched silicon wafer in a potassium hydroxide koh solution in order to release the silicon nanowires from the etched silicon wafer afterwards the silicon nanowires are dispersed into a solution by an ultrasonic bath and further separated from the dispersions using centrifuge in step 26 the silicon nanowires are then mixed with a polymer binder at step 28 at nanowire to binder weight ratios of 1 2 to 1 1 in order to facilitate the afterwards fabrication processing the viscosity of the mixture of silicon nanowires and the polymer binder are adjusted by adding a solvent therein thereby obtaining a printing ink in step 30 the last step 32 of the method 20 is to form a thin film using the printing ink obtained in step 30 in order to better illustrate the present invention an example is provided herein boron doped p type silicon 100 wafer with a resistivity of 15 25 u03c9 cm was used as a starting wafer for synthesis of silicon nanowires etching was performed in an etching solution consisting of 4 8m of hf 0 03m of agno 3 and deionized di water for 2 hours at room temperature the scanning electron microscopy sem images of as etched silicon nanowires on the wafer are shown in fig2 of which fig2 a is the cross sectional and fig2 b is the plan view image it.