The petrochemical industry relies on catalysts for hydrocarbon conversions that often contain ill-defined active metal sites, hampering rational improvement. Surface organometallic chemistry (SOMC) has enabled the design of catalysts with tailored metal sites, often referred to as single sites. In this Perspective, I consider how SOMC has opened routes to synthesis of fuels and energy carriers not possible via traditional approaches and led to the discovery of alkane homologation processes, by giving access to a large proportion of low coordinated and highly reactive surface sites. While challenges lie ahead, particularly with respect to the improvement of catalyst activity and lifetime, as well as further control and characterization of active/surface site structure, SOMC is effective for increasing molecular level understanding of catalytic events as found in related industrial systems. Furthermore, single-site catalysts can also be used to provide molecular level precision in complex systems such as supported nanoparticles where dopant and support effects are ubiquitous, but poorly understood.

石油化工行业依赖于烃类转化的催化剂，这些催化剂通常含有不确定的活性金属位点，从而阻碍了合理的改进。表面有机金属化学（SOMC）已使设计具有定制金属位点（通常称为单个位点）的催化剂成为可能。在此观点中，我考虑了SOMC如何通过传统方法不可能开辟的途径来合成燃料和能量载体，并通过允许使用大量低配位和高反应性表面位点来发现烷烃同化过程。尽管面临挑战，尤其是在提高催化剂活性和使用寿命以及进一步控制和表征活性/表面位点结构方面，SOMC对于提高分子水平对相关工业系统中发现的催化事件的理解是有效的。此外，单中心催化剂也可用于在复杂的系统（例如负载型纳米粒子）中提供分子水平的精确度，其中掺杂剂和载体效应无处不在，但了解甚少。