IntroductionThe oxidation of carbon monoxide at around room temperature is the most famous reaction known for gold catalysts. Haruta ' s group discovered in 1987 [1, 2] that gold is a unique catalyst for this reaction when gold metal particles are smaller than 5 nm and supported on oxides. Since then, extensive and intensive fundamental works have been published, and expanding new applications, from air purifi cation (gas masks, gas sensors, indoor air quality control) to hydrogen purifi cation for fuel cells (PROX, preferential selective oxidation of CO in the presence of H 2 ) have been developed.Gold is indeed active in carbon monoxide oxidation at a much lower temperature ( ≤ RT) than any platinum group metal [3] ( Fig. 15.1 ). The difference in reactivity can be due to the fact that Pt, Pd and Rh easily dissociate molecular oxygen at low temperature and bind strongly both atomic oxygen and CO. Tightly bound adsorbates have to overcome sizeable barriers to react, making the reaction rates signifi cant only at rather high temperatures [4] . On the contrary, on gold the reactants are loosely bound, but a higher binding energy of CO on gold nanoparticles than on bulk gold may provide suffi cient concentrations of CO on the surface for the reaction of oxidation to occur with negligible energy barriers. The main problem with this apparently simple reaction is that if CO is known to adsorb on low coordinated surface gold sites, the adsorption and activation of oxygen on gold particles is more puzzling (Section 15.4.3 ). The CO oxidation mechanism is not yet elucidated in spite of the huge number of papers published, and four main mechanisms have been suggested.High activity in CO oxidation when gold particles are smaller than 5 nm, and supported on reducible oxides, such as iron oxide or titania, led Haruta et al. [3, 5 -8] to propose the fi rst mechanism of CO oxidation (Fig. 15.2 ): the reaction takes place at the interface between the gold metal particle and the oxide support, i.e., between CO adsorbed on the gold particles and O 2 activated by the oxide support. Later, based on the assumption that metal cations could be located at the metalsupport interface, Bond and Thompson [9] proposed a mechanism rather similar,
475Nanoparticles and Catalysis. Edited by Didier Astruc