The Fox group in collaboration with the Costantini group and IBM Zürich report the synthesis and characterisation of a range of Kekulé/non-Kekulé PAHs by STM/AFM with amazing resolution. Isolation of previously intangible and significantly less stable compounds with complex reaction mechanisms, in combination with the imaging used to help identify these compounds has highlighted an appealing synthetic-physical collaboration in characterising compounds.

The full article is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/chem.201404877.