Gold supported on ceria nanotubes for CO oxidation

Abstract CeO2 is a typical of fluorite structure, semiconductor material, has high oxygen storage capability as well as unique redox property, which is widely used as catalysts supports in catalysis. Ceria nanotubes and nanocubes are prepared via hydrothermal method in the present work, and Au/CeO2 catalysts are prepared using deposition-precipitation technique with HAuCl4 as gold precursor. The prepared samples were used as catalysts for the CO oxidation reaction using a fix-bed reactor at 50–130 °C and characterized by XRD, BET, SEM, TEM, XPS, TPR and ICP. It is found that CeO2-NT and CeO2-NC expose different surface planes. The XPS and H2-TPR results illustrates that the {110} surface exposed by CeO2-NT has stronger interaction with gold particles, which benefits the electron and oxygen transfer between Au and ceria. All these characters of the Au/CeO2-NT(3%) result in the better activity and stability than the Au/CeO2-NC(3%).