Electroplating is a common process used in a wide range of industries. For example, electroplated copper and copper-based alloys are used in ultralarge-scale integration devices requiring multilevel metallization. [ 1 , 2 ] Electroplating has more recently been used in optoelectronic components, such as transparent thin-fi lm transistors, fl at panel displays, light-emitting diodes, photovoltaic cells, and electrochromic windows, where substrates are typically semiconductors (GaAs) or transparent conductive oxides (TCOs, e.g., zinc oxide, indium tin oxide, and fl uorine-doped tin oxide). [ 3 , 4 ] However, metallization directly on glass and other low-roughness ceramics is diffi cult because the smooth interface does not provide opportunities to interlock at the interface between the substrate and the materials to be plated. [ 5 ] Accordingly, prior to electroplating, etching is commonly used to increase surface roughness, followed by sputtering a thin adhesive layer (such as titanium) to improve adhesion. For electroplating metallization, the key is the nucleation process, which is determined by the formation energy, excess energy, and internal strain energy. [ 6–9 ] In general, a smooth and hydrophobic semiconductor surface, such as silicon, gallium arsenide, or transparent conductive glass, has low surface energy and poor wettability, leading to a relatively high excess energy for electroplating nucleation. As a consequence, scattered and irregular grains grow on a small number of nucleation sites, causing poor interface adhesion and large surface roughness. Strain energy, originating from the different atomic arrangement of the two adjacent layers, increases with increasing fi lm thickness and can sometimes cause the fi lm to spontaneously peel off. In many applications, it is relatively common to electroplate metal over an entire surface of a base conductor even though only small areas of the metal are needed on the surface. The use of electroplating in this context typically consists of a patterning process followed by a metallization process. Photolithography is the most popular method to create such patterns where a photoresist is used as the patterning layer. [ 10 , 11 ] The metallization process typically consists of sputtering, electroplating, and chemical mechanical polishing. Metal is fi rst sputtered onto the patterned regions, which improves both the adhesion and electrical conductivity of the primary structure,