The article reveals a facile protocol for scalable production of gold nanostructures on a high performance engineering thermoplastic substrate made of polyarylene ether nitrile (PEN) for the first time. Firstly, gold thin films with different thicknesses of 2 nm, 4 nm and 6 nm were evaporated on a spin-coated PEN substrate on glass slide in vacuum. Next, the as-evaporated samples were thermally annealed around the glass transition temperature of the PEN substrate, on which gold nanostructures with island-like mor phology were created. Moreover, it was found that the initial gold evaporation thickness and annealing atmosphere played an important role in determining the morphology and plasmonic properties of the formulated Au NPs. Interestingly, we discovered that isotropic Au NPs can be easily fabricated on the free standing PEN substrate, which was fabricated by a cost-effective polymer solution casting method. More specifically, monodispersed Au nanospheres with an average size of similar to 60nm were obtained after anneal ing a 4nm gold film covered PEN casting substrate at 220 degrees C for 2h in oxygen. Therefore, the scalable production of Au NPs with controlled morphology on PEN substrate would open the way for develop ment of robust flexible nanosensors and optical devices using high performance engineering polyarylene ethers. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.