When it comes to the development of the applications of photoswitches, one is faced with the challenge of engineering these molecular switches onto adaptive surfaces/materials. Obviously, the photoisomerization of molecular switches also depends on their chemical and physical environments. For instance, an azobenzene derivative, azobenzene thiol, fails to isomerize when lying flat on a gold surface because of a surface quenching effect. Such a quenching effect is expected to be significantly reduced when the distance between the hydrazone and the metal surface increases, as the rate of both energy (~1/d 4 ) and electron (~e -d ) transfer are strongly distance dependent. To examine the influence of a proximal metal surface on the isomerization efficiency, and to minimize the surface quenching effect and thus improve the PSS of the photoswitches, we studied the effect of systematically varying the distance between the hydrazone switch and the metal surface. Thus far, questions about the influence of the chemical structure of photoswitches on metal surfaces on their isomerization properties have not been fully answered. Understanding these effects will facilitate the development process of their real-world applications.