Atomic scale investigations of surface reaction mechanism between transition metal phthalocyanine with small gas molecule

The field of surface catalysis is brought out to simplify the process of complex catalysis. In this thesis, the interaction between three different systems are investigated as model catalysts for adsorption of reactant, including nitrogen and MnPc, nitrogen and FePc as well as hydrogen and MnPc. LT-STM is utilized for real-space imaging, electronic structure characterization and single molecule manipulation. XPS and UPS measurements provide the information of the electronic configuration evolution and DFT calculations are also employed to provide complementary information. It has been demonstrated that activated nitrogen atom radials and dinitrogen molecule adsorbed on the coordinately unsaturated single Mn metal atom and Fe metal atom in surface confined MnPc and FePc monolayer separately at room temperature and low pressure. Two additional hydrogen atoms are found to bond with the two opposite aza-bridging N atoms of the MnPc macrocycle after exposing to activated H2.