5. Catalytic properties of gold nanoparticles

5.1 Gold acquires the status of a "catalyst"

Although gold had long been neglected by chemists due to its inert nature, a few experimental results published in 1973 showed that, in highly divided form (the term nanometric was not in use at the time), gold appeared to have catalytic properties.

But it was the work of Masatake Haruta in Japan in 1987 that really proved that small gold NPs catalyzed the oxidation reaction of carbon monoxide (CO) into carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ), even at room temperature