IntroductionGold has long been regarded as an "inert" surface and bulk gold surfaces do not chemisorb many molecules easily. However, in the last decade, largely through the efforts of Masatake Haruta, gold particles, particularly those below 5 nm in size, have begun to garner attention for unique catalytic properties (1-8). In recent years, supported gold particles have been shown to be effective as catalysts for low temperature CO oxidation (9), selective oxidation of propene to propene oxide (10), water gas shift (11), NO reduction (12), selective hydrogenation of acetylene (or butadiene) (13)

Monolayer gold islands with a thickness of one or a few monolayers on an FeO(111) substrate are found to exhibit identical CO adsorption behavior as large gold particles (see picture). This result suggests that particle thickness does not play a significant role in CO adsorption, and therefore size effects seen for the low‐temperature CO oxidation reaction are not related to quantum size effects.

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