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No. Decacene, a ten-ring acene generated on a gold surface in 2017, was an important milestone—but later reports described longer acenes: tridecacene in 2024 and pentadecacene in 2025. The answer depends on what “longest” means: these reports concern molecules generated and studied on a surface, not the largest acene isolated as a bulk material.
What decacene is—and what its 2017 achievement meant
Acenes are molecules built from benzene rings fused in a straight line. The name indicates the ring count: decacene has ten fused rings. In 2017, researchers prepared stable tetraepoxy precursors using solution chemistry, then reduced them on an Au(111) gold surface to generate decacene. They imaged the molecules with scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and examined electronic resonances with scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS). The 2017 study reported this as a surface-generation achievement.
That distinction is important: making a molecule on a surface and examining it there is not the same as isolating it as a bulk substance. The 2017 paper noted that unsubstituted acenes up to heptacene had been isolated in bulk, while nonacene was the largest detected at that time. Decacene’s achievement was its generation and characterization on a surface—not its availability as an ordinary bulk material.
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Is decacene still the longest acene?
No, not under the surface-generation metric used in the later reports. The published sequence moved from ten rings to thirteen, then fifteen:
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| Reported year | Acene | Rings | Reported achievement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Decacene | 10 | Generated by reducing tetraepoxy precursors on Au(111), then studied using STM and STS. 2017 study |
| 2024 | Tridecacene | 13 | Produced by a combined solution and surface route involving multistep manipulation in a low-temperature STM; the authors described it as the longest acene generated to date in that report. 2024 study |
| 2025 | Pentadecacene | 15 | Reported as the longest acene generated to date, using multistep STM-tip manipulation of a precursor on Au(111). 2025 study |
On the evidence in these publications, pentadecacene is the latest reported surface-generated record as of 2025. That is a dated research claim, not a timeless ranking: a later report could supersede it.
Why “longest acene” needs a qualification
Record claims can describe different experimental achievements. A molecule may be generated on a surface, detected, characterized, isolated in bulk, or studied under other conditions; those terms are not interchangeable. A surface-generated molecule examined individually by STM is not automatically a stable, isolable bulk sample.
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So, when comparing claims, check the number of linearly fused rings alongside the method and what the researchers actually demonstrated. For example, the 2017 decacene work used Au(111) and STM/STS characterization, while the later reports describe low-temperature STM manipulation or STM-tip manipulation. A record in one category should not be silently recast as a record in another.
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Decacene marked a significant step in on-surface chemistry: researchers generated a ten-ring acene from a prepared precursor and investigated its properties at the single-molecule scale. Its historical importance does not depend on retaining the record. The later progression to tridecacene and pentadecacene shows how surface-based methods extended the length of acenes reported in research, while the distinction between surface generation and bulk isolation remains essential.
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