Metal thin film electrodes on flexible polymer substrates are inherently unstable against humidity and mechanical stresses because of their poor adhesion properties. We introduce a novel approach for improving the adhesion characteristics of metal-polymer interface based on the nanostructuring of the polymer substrate by using nanoimprint lithography. The adhesion characteristics of metal-polymer interface were measured by accelerated test, cyclic bending test and double cantilever beam (DCB) test. The interface of Au/Ti dual layer thin film and nanoimprinted PMMA substrate shows over 2.03 and 1.95 times higher adhesion energy (G(c)) than that of Au/Ti dual layer thin film and plane PMMA substrate in air and wet environments, respectively. The adhesion energy between metal thin film and polymer substrate was dramatically improved by the increased surface roughness and mechanical interlocking effect of numerous nanoscale anchors at the edges of nanoimprinted surface, which was verified by both experiment and numerical analysis.

High‐performance, transparent, wearable heaters with fast thermal response are developed. To accomplish this, highly conductive and transparent copper (Cu) mesh films are transfer printed onto flexible poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) substrates of different thicknesses. The thermal response characteristics of the heaters, with different PVA substrate thicknesses, are analyzed and results are recorded. The Cu mesh/PVA film heater shows a favorable figure of merit value of 228.4 and outstanding durability in response to mechanical stress tests for bending, crumpling, and detaching. Through the test results, it is concluded that the thermal response time of the heater is directly related to the thickness of the PVA substrate. The optimized Cu mesh/PVA film heater, with a substrate thickness of ≈60 μm and input voltage of 3 V (DC), exhibits a fast Joule heating effect with a response time of ≈12 s and a ramping rate of ≈7.5 °C s−1. These are excellent results, compared with the previously reported studies with other metal‐based flexible transparent heaters. A flexible transparent heater with low applied voltage and fast response time is expected to have innovative electrothermal applications, such as transparent soft actuators, wearable heaters, and medical thermotherapy pads.

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An effective and reliable fabrication approach for silver nanostructure arrays was developed using UV nanoimprint with a lift-off resist and a Si-based etch mask for enhanced plasmonic resonance-driven device performance. Since a tapered nanopillar array is imprinted on the resist, by coating it with a Si-based etch mask layer and carrying out the etching procedure, a reverse-tapered nanohole array for metal deposition can be crated. Compared to the conventional lift-off process, a more tolerable window of lifeoff process conditions is possible, and dot patterns with high-aspect-ratio thickness profiles and no rabbit ears can be fabricated. Simulation results corresponding to dot diameters of 150, 235, and 265 nm (twice those in their period) were qualitatively in good agreement with experimental results in terms of transmittance. This suggests that the proposed technique is a fairly reliable and accessible fabrication strategy for applications.

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