Recently, an important progress on stabilized gold nanoparticles has been made by the cooperation between the Catalytic Reaction Chemistry Research Group in the State Key Laboratory of Catalysis leaded by Prof. wenjie Shen and the Research Resources Center headed by Prof. Jingyue (Jimmy) Liu. The corresponding paper with the title of”Stabilized Gold Nanoparticles on Ceria Nanorods by Strong Interfacial Anchoring” has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja310341j.

Au/CeO₂ catalysts are highly active for low temperature CO oxidation and water−gas shift reaction, but they deactivate rapidly because of sintering of gold nanoparticles, linked to the collapse or restructuring of the gold−ceria interfacial perimeters. To date, a detailed atomic-level insight into the restructuring of the active gold−ceria interfaces is still lacking. In this work, Prof. Shen and Prof. Liu report that gold particles of 2−4 nm size, strongly anchored onto rod shaped CeO₂, are not only highly active but also distinctively stable under realistic reaction conditions. Environmental transmission electron microscopy analyses identified that the gold nanoparticles, in response to alternating oxidizing and reducing atmospheres, changed their shapes but did not sinter at temperatures up to 573 K. This finding offers a new strategy to stabilize gold nanoparticles on ceria by engineering the gold−ceria interfacial structure, which could be extended to other oxide-supported metal nanocatalysts.