Decacene: On‐Surface Generation

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).     

Silica Scaffold with Shifted “Plumber's Nightmare” Networks and their Interconversion into Diamond Networks

Bicontinuous structures with hyperbolic surfaces have been found in a variety of natural and synthetic systems. Herein, we present the synthesis and structural study of the shifted double‐primitive networks, which is known as the rare “plumber's nightmare”, and its interconversion into diamond networks. The scaffold was prepared by self‐assembly of an amphiphilic triblock terpolymer and silica precursors. Electron crystallography indicates that the structure consists of two sets of hollow primitive networks shifted along 0.75b and 0.25c axes ( 2pcu (38 63), space group Cmcm ). The “side‐by‐side” epitaxial relationship of the primitive and diamond networks with unit cell ratio of about 1.30 has been directly observed with the intermediate surface related to the rPD family. These results bring new insights to previous theoretical studies.