Gold shines brilliantly and eternally. In old ruins of 7000 years ago we find ancient gold jewelleries as they are now. Accordingly, gold has been considered as being chemically inert metal. In contrast, other noble metals such as palladium and platinum have been practically utilized for chemicals production and for automobile exhaust gas treatments. In early 1980s this understanding of gold was completely changed by the pioneering works of Professor Graham J. Hutchings and Professor Masatake Haruta. Professor Hutchings predicted in 1985 and confirmed experimentally in 1988 that gold cations such as chloroauric acid could display superior catalytic performance to that of mercury chloride in the hydrochlorination of acetylene to vinyl chloride. In 1987, Professor Haruta reported that gold nanoparticles (smaller than 5 nm confirmed by XRD) exhibited extremely high catalytic activity in CO oxidation even at a temperature as low as 200 K. In 1989, Professor Haruta collaborated with Professor Sumio Iijima to characterize these gold catalysts by transmission electron microscopy and clearly observed that gold nanoparticles of around 4 nm were homogeneously dispersed on 3d transition metal oxides. Then, the concept of nano gold catalysis was formulated, and has greatly influenced the academic and the industrial world. For example, Professor Avelino Corma explored many simple reactions by using gold nanoparticles and clusters supported on selective metal oxides.

So far these milestone discoveries have ignited extensive investigations on gold catalysts in many types of reactions such as oxidation, hydrogenation, coupling reaction and water-gas shift reaction. This can be reflected in the exponential increase of the publications in the field of gold catalysis. On the other hand, gold catalysis has been gradually commercialized to produce bulk and fine chemicals in industry. A new process for the production of methylmethacrylate by the oxidative esterification of methacrolein with methanol was commercialized in 2008 in Japan by Asahi Kasei Chemicals using core-shell Au-NiO as the catalyst. Johnson Matthey and Jacobs has built a pilot factory in China to utilize gold catalysts instead of mercury chloride to catalyse the hydrochlorination of acetylene to vinyl chloride. The recent successive commercialization of gold catalysts proves that gold catalysis can play more and more important roles in chemical industry and in the environmental protection, contributing greatly to the sustainable developments and the maintenance of human health.

This special issue on gold catalysis contains 25 articles, including 3 MiniReviews, 3 Reviews, 4 Communications and 15 Original Articles, and covering the catalytic applications of gold catalysts in CO oxidation, aerobic oxidation of alcohols, biomass hydrogenation, hydrochlorination, hydrodechlorination, nitrones synthesis, amides N-alkylation, and some other topics. We hope that this issue will help us to know about the latest progresses in the field of gold catalysis in the experimental and theoretical aspects. We also expect that this issue will promote the development of gold catalysis in fundamental research and applied research in the near future.

Finally, we would like to thank all the authors and reviewers for their significant contributions to this special issue. It is their expertise, enthusiasm, and hard work that guarantee the high quality of this special issue. We would also appreciate the editorial and production staff very much for their great efforts in editing and publishing this special issue.