Solderless and durable electrical contacts may be made by growing carbon nanotube (CNT) or nanowire forests in a solderless manner directly on the contact surfaces of integrated circuits, PCBs, IC packages, hybrid substrates, contact carriers, rotor components, stator components, etc. The electrical contacts and methods may be employed in a variety of leaded and leadless electronic packaging applications on PCBs, IC packages, and hybrid substrates including, but not limited to, ball grid array (BGA) packages, land grid array (LGA) and leadless chip carrier (LCC) packages, as well as for making interconnections in “flip-chip” configurations, “bare die” configurations, and interconnection of integrated circuit die in multi-layer and “3-D” stacking arrangements.