What fascinates me most about this puzzle is the way that the inconsistent horizontal bonds force us to build the wrong monomer when chasing min area (or height, for that matter).  And that means we need to either stick a waste atom on the end of the polymer and rely on validation oddities, or else hold onto an extra atom from the first monomer and stick it to the last.  I opted for the latter, because the ability to shuffle that extra atom around offers a potential extra hex of working space.

Coincidentally, that approach also incentivizes building from the right instead of the left.  I favored that idea even before all the theorizing, because right-side construction lets us use the ellipsis hex for working space.  Taken together, that means we get 2 extra working hexes with a right-side build.  Yes please!

I did a little bit of work with left-side builds, too, just enough to make me believe that you can make a 64 there as well.  But it quickly seemed that the process would be much slower and more fiddly, so I didn't test layouts with vigor or program anything very far.

Surprisingly, triplex treated me quite kindly, and didn't offer much trouble.  I was definitely helped by my experience with Suspiciously Stable Substance, which had similar puzzle features and metrics.  Hence the tribute in the solve title.