Tiny gold clusters as top-notch catalysts

[spectre]

I just stumbled on this science article, which I thought some alchemists would find interesting.

This news article from 5th September 08 is on gold as a catalyst, for an example "oxidation of poisonous carbon monoxide (CO) into harmless carbon dioxide at room temperatures".

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/nios-nap090508.php

[BeautifulEvil]

Cool article!

Their results revealed that the most active gold nanoclusters for CO conversion are bilayers approximately 0.5-0.8 nanometer in diameter (40 times smaller than the common cold virus) and containing about 10 gold atoms.

That's SMALL! Just think, it contains 10 gold atoms. M-state gold is only said to contain one/two gold atoms (attached to an alkali group, sodium, potassium, etc). Really small!

[BeautifulEvil]

So I've been thinking about this, and perhaps some of the old alchemists noticed that when they added very sublime and fine metallic gold power (ph swing, and then precipitate to the metallic form) to their work the "changes" occurred faster (i.e. this is what we would call a catalyst).

Mere supposition though.

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