A review. Recent progress in the understanding of the fascinating catalysis of CO combustion by supported gold particles is reviewed with refs. Focusing on size-selected gold clusters consisting of only a few atoms, i.e., the size regime with properties non-scalable from the bulk properties, we discuss the current knowledge of the different factors controlling the reactivity at the mol. level. These factors include the role of the oxide support, its defects, cluster charging as well as the structural fluxionality of clusters, the cluster size dependency, and the promotional effect of water. By combining exptl. results with quantum mech. ab initio calcns., a detailed picture of the reaction mechanism emerges. While similar mechanisms might be active for gold nanoparticles in the scalable size regime, it is shown that for different systems (defined by the cluster size, the support, exptl. conditions, etc.) the reaction mechanism differs and, hence, no generalized explanation for the catalytic driving force of small gold particles can be given. [on SciFinder(R)]     «

A review. Recent progress in the understanding of the fascinating catalysis of CO combustion by supported gold particles is reviewed with refs. Focusing on size-selected gold clusters consisting of only a few atoms, i.e., the size regime with properties non-scalable from the bulk properties, we discuss the current knowledge of the different factors controlling the reactivity at the mol. level. These factors include the role of the oxide support, its defects, cluster charging as well as the struc...     »