The specification describes a contact printing technique for forming patterns of thin films with nanometer resolution over large areas. The procedure, termed here "nanotransfer printing (nTP)", relies on tailored surface chemistries for transferring thin films, typically metal films, from the raised regions of a stamp to a substrate when these two elements are brought into intimate physical contact. This technique is purely additive, it is fast (<15 s contact times), and the printing occurs in a single processing step at room temperature in open air. nTP is capable of producing patterns with a wide range of features with sizes down to 100 nm, and edge resolution better than 25 nm. Electrical contacts and interconnects have been fabricated for high performance organic thin film transistors (TFTs) and complementary inverter circuits, to demonstrate one of the many potential applications for nTP.