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Abstract

Carbon monoxide catalytic oxidation is considered to be the best model of catalytic reaction. There has been a renewed interest in CO oxidation recently because of its applications in air purification, pollution control, carbon dioxide lasers and fuel-cells systems. Noble metals are commonly investigated as CO oxidation catalysts for their excellent catalytic activity for low temperature CO oxidation, but due to their high cost there is considerable interest in exploring less expensive materials. Metal oxides and metal composite materials are considered as one of the alternative. Due to the low cost and high surface area, metal oxide nanoparticles are commonly used as catalysts or the catalyst supports.

In this study, shape controlled metal oxides are synthesized by hydrothermal growth. Hydrothermally synthesized copper oxide and indium oxide exhibited improved performance for CO oxidation compared to the commercial nanoparticles. With the addition of a metal co-catalyst, the performance could be further improved. The indium oxide composites even exhibited better activity than the noble metal platinum composites.