High catalytic activity for CO oxidation of gold nanoparticles confined in acidic support Al-SBA-15 at low temperatures.

While there is a large number of recent studies of Au nanocatalysts supported on metal oxides, low-temperature CO oxidation under an acidic environment has not yet been accomplished. Over a novel acidic Al-SBA-15 support, uniformly distributed gold nanoparticles with sizes approximately 2.7 nm were obtained by a successive procedure of aminosilane grafting, gold adsorption-reduction, and then high-temperature hydrogen treatment. The catalyst system, Au@Al-SBA-15, exhibits extraordinarily high activity for CO oxidation at 80 degrees C. By varying the Si/Al ratio of the support, the dependence of the catalytic activity on the support Si/Al ratio was found in the CO oxidation reaction.