This paper attempts to review recent examples of chemical design of catalytically active metal-complexes on oxide surfaces by means of attaching and molecular imprinting techniques. Metal complexes formed on oxide surfaces have generally different structures from their homogeneous analogues and often exhibit remarkable reactivities and catalyses based on the unique structures. Recently, functionalized catalytic sites have been combined to attached metal complexes for design of molecular shape selective space regulating catalyses. Here, we pick up several recent interesting supported metal-complex catalysts with different metal units. We also introduce new design of catalytic sites achieved by combining two methods of metal-complex attaching and molecular imprinting on oxide surfaces. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.