Acenes are intriguing molecules with unique electronic properties. The difficulties in their preparation owing to low stability under ambient conditions are apparent because successful syntheses of long unsubstituted acenes are still scarce, in spite of the great attention they have attracted. Only unsubstituted acenes up to heptacene have been isolated in bulk, with nonacene being the largest acene detected to date. Herein we use on-surface assisted reduction of tetraepoxy decacene precursors on Au(111) as the key step to generate unprecedented decacene which is visualized and its electronic resonances studied by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS).

Surface-assisted reduction of specially designed air-stable precursors allows us to study single hexacene molecules on Au(111) by scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, mapping with intramolecular resolution their extended electronic eigenstates.