Polycyclic conjugated hydrocarbons have acquired increased interests recently because of their potential applications in electronic devices. On metal surfaces, the selective synthesis of four- and five-membered carbon rings remains challenging due to the presence of diverse reaction pathways. Here, utilizing the same precursor molecule, we successfully achieved substrate-controlled highly selective cycloaddition reactions towards four- and five-membered carbon rings. A 97 % yield for four-membered carbon rings on Au(111), while a 96 % yield towards five-membered carbon rings is achieved on Ag(111). The detailed topological structures of the reaction products are carefully examined by bond-resolving scanning tunneling microscopy (BR-STM) imaging with a CO functionalized tip. The underlying mechanism of the novel surface-directed reaction selectivity is elucidated by extensive density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Our study paves the way for high selective synthesis of polycyclic conjugated hydrocarbons with non-benzenoid rings.

Chemical reactions on surfaces play a central role both for our daily life and industrial purposes, including the storage and release of energy, as well as the formation of new materials. To achieve high efficiency, catalysis lies in the heart of chemical reactions as it plays a critical role in accelerating the chemical transformation to target products. However, environmental issues arise as the applications of catalytic technologies and current synthetic approaches such as pollution from undesirable byproducts and massive emission of carbon dioxides due to the usage of fossil fuels. This calls for developing improved strategies for fabricating new materials with highly efficient catalytic properties. In recent years, on-surface chemical reactions have also been used to synthesize new low-dimensional materials with atomic precision, by coupling molecules into nanostructures. It is crucial to not only obtain high activity for chemical reactions, but also achieve distinct selectivity towards desired products. For this purpose, understanding mechanisms of target chemical reactions and origins of catalysts’ activity are of great significance to facilitate chemical processes.

In this thesis, three types of chemical reactions are investigated within the framework of density functional theory (DFT), in which chemical reactions relevant for both heterogeneous catalysis and electrochemical synthesis are considered on two-dimensional transition metal carbides (2D MXenes), and chemical reactions for synthesizing organic nanostructures are studied on metal surfaces. Focusing on one of the most fundamental chemical reaction, C(sp³)-H activation, we demonstrate that MXenes can serve as highly efficient heterogeneous catalysts and exhibit high activity. The thermally triggered C-H activations are shown to follow the “radical-like” mechanism on MXenes, in which O terminations serve as active sites. By adopting the hydrogen affinity (E_H) as a descriptor, both the geometry configuration and the catalytic activity of MXenes can be quantitatively characterized.

In the context of on-surface synthesis, we theoretically propose reaction mechanisms of two types of chemical reactions on surface. A new strategy for constructing C-C bonds via the desulfonylation reaction was achieved experimentally for the first time by collaborators. With DFT calculations, an observed discrepancy between Ag(111) and Au(111) is ascribed to interactions between surfaces and molecules. Secondly, the formation mechanism of the 2D biphenylene network (BPN), a recently realized carbon allotrope formed by intermolecular HF zipping on Au(111), has been computationally investigated.

With the tool of DFT calculations, a single Ni atom catalyst supported by Ti₃C₂T₂ MXenes for electrochemical nitrogen reduction has been theoretically proposed. Such single atom catalyst (SAC) is computationally screened from three aspects including stability, activity, and selectivity. Our theoretical results show that not only the catalytic performance of the Ni SAC predicted by screening criteria can be verified, but also a H rich environment can be beneficial for the electrochemical nitrogen reduction on such SACs.

In summary, first-principles calculations have been performed to evaluate the catalytic performance of 2D MXenes towards C-H activation, unravel formation mechanisms of organic materials synthesized via on-surface reactions, and design effective catalysts towards the synthesis of ammonia. It is anticipated that this thesis can pave the way for the rational design of high-efficient catalysts for various reactions and shed lights on developing synthetic strategies of unprecedented organic materials.

A highly distorted chiral nanographene structure composed of triple corannulene-fused [5]helicenes is prepared with the help of the Heck reaction and oxidative photocyclization with an overall isolated yield of 28%. The complex three-dimensional (3D) structure of the bowl-helix hybrid nanostructure is studied by a combination of non contact atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) on the Cu(111) surface, density functional theory calculations, AFM/STM simulations, and high-performance liquid chromatography-electronic circular dichroism analysis. This examination reveals a molecular structure in which the three bowl-shaped corannulene bladesd position themselves in a C3-symmetric fashion around a highly twisted triphenylene core. The molecule appears to be shaped like a propeller in which the concave side of the bowls face away from the connected [5]helicene motif. The chirality of the nanostructure is confirmed by the direct visualization of both MMM and PPP enantiomers at the single-molecule level by scanning probe microscopies. These results underline that submolecular resolution imaging by AFM/STM is a powerful real-space tool for the stereochemical characterization of 3D curved chiral nanographene structures.

On-surface acetylenic homocoupling has been proposed to construct carbon nanostructures featuring sp hybrid-ization. However, the efficiency of linear acetylenic coupling is far from satisfactory, often resulting in undesired enyne products or cyclotrimerization products due to the lack of strategies to enhance chemical selectivity. Herein, we inspect the acetylenic homocou-pling reaction of polarized terminal alkynes (TAs) on Au(111) with bond-resolved scanning probe microscopy. The replacement of benzene with pyridine moieties significantly prohibits the cyclotrimerization pathway and facilitates the linear coupling to produce well-aligned N-doped graphdiyne nanowires. Combined with density functional theory calculations, we reveal that the pyridinic nitrogen modification substantially differentiates the coupling motifs at the initial C-C coupling stage (head-to-head vs head-to-tail), which is decisive for the preference of linear coupling over cyclotrimerization.

We have computationally studied the formation mechanism of the biphenylene network via the intermolecular HF zipping, as well as identified key intermediates experimentally, on the Au(111) surface. We elucidate that the zipping process consists of a series of defluorinations, dehydrogenations, and C–C coupling reactions. The Au substrate not only serves as the active site for defluorination and dehydrogenation, but also forms C–Au bonds that stabilize the defluorinated and dehydrogenated phenylene radicals, leading to "standing" benzyne groups. Despite that the C–C coupling between the "standing" benzyne groups is identified as the rate-limiting step, the limiting barrier can be reduced by the adjacent chemisorbed benzyne groups. The theoretically proposed mechanism is further supported by scanning tunneling microscopy experiments, in which the key intermediate state containing chemisorbed benzyne groups can be observed. This study provides a comprehensive understanding towards the on-surface intermolecular HF zipping, anticipated to be instructive for its future applications.

Amide bond formation is one of the most important reactions in biochemistry, notably being of crucial importance for the origin of life. Herein, we combine scanning tunneling microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies to provide evidence for thermally activated abiotic formation of amide bonds between adsorbed precursors through direct carboxyl-amine coupling under ultrahigh-vacuum conditions by means of on-surface synthesis. Complementary insights from temperature-programmed desorption measurements and density functional theory calculations reveal the competition between cross-coupling amide formation and decarboxylation reactions on the Au(111) surface. Furthermore, we demonstrate the critical influence of the employed metal support: whereas on Au(111) the coupling readily occurs, different reaction scenarios prevail on Ag(111) and Cu(111). The systematic experiments signal that archetypical bio-related molecules can be abiotically synthesized in clean environments without water or oxygen.

Direct coupling or transformation of inert alkanes based on the selective C-H activation is of great importance for both chemistry and chemical engineering. Here, we report the coupling of polyenes that are transformed from n-dotriacontane (n-C32H66) through on-surface cascade dehydrogenation on Cu (110) surface, leading to the formation of polyacetylene (PA). Three distinct linkages have been resolved by scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and noncontact atomic force microscope (nc-AFM). Apart from the alpha-type linkage which is the stemless coupling of the terminal C-C double bond in trans-configuration, beta- and gamma-type linkages appear as knots or defects which are, in fact, the C-C couplings in cis-configurations. Interestingly, the "defects" can be effectively suppressed by adjusting the surface coverage, thus making it of general interest for uniform structure modulation.

Selective C(sp(3))-H activation is of fundamental importance in processing alkane feedstocks to produce high-value-added chemical products. By virtue of an on-surface synthesis strategy, we report selective cascade dehydrogenation of n-alkane molecules under surface constraints, which yields monodispersed all-trans conjugated polyenes with unprecedented length controllability. We are also able to demonstrate the generality of this concept for alkyl-substituted molecules with programmable lengths and diverse functionalities, and more importantly its promising potential in molecular wiring.