Wafer-Scale Atomically-Thin Gold: Transferable Platform for Flexible Optoelectronics, Thermal Management and...

The integration of metals into two-dimensional material architectures is essential for next-generation electronics, but their high surface energy intrinsically favors three-dimensional island growth, hindering the scalable fabrication of continuous, atomically-thin metallic layers. While recent advances have yielded freestanding 2D metals like goldene, their technological integration remains constrained by limited dimensions. Here we resolve this fundamental thermodynamic challenge by merging template stripping with a graphene-inspired transfer method to produce 6-inch wafer-scale, continuous, and transferable gold films with thicknesses approaching the atomic limit. These ultrathin gold films exhibit atomic smoothness with a root-mean-square roughness below 0.4 nm and possess near-bulk electronic properties, yielding exceptional optoelectronic performance with optical transmittance above 86% and sheet resistance below 20 Ω/□. The adhesion-free nature of the films enables their versatile integration into various devices, which we demonstrate with flexible organic light-emitting diodes, effective thermal camouflage, and conformal epidermal sensors that achieve a signal-to-noise ratio of ≈15 dB for electrocardiogram and ≈70 dB for electromyogram monitoring, superior to that of clinical gel electrodes. The suggested approach establishes a universal and scalable route for integrating atomically-thin metals into complex heterostructures and functional systems.