Catalysis by gold has rapidly become a hot topic in chemistry, with a new discovery being made almost every week. Gold is equally effective as a heterogeneous or a homogeneous catalyst and in this Review we attempt to marry these two facets to demonstrate this new found and general efficacy of gold. The latest discoveries are placed within a historical context, but the main thrust is to highlight the new catalytic possibilities that gold‐catalyzed reactions currently offer the synthetic chemist, in particular in redox reactions and nucleophilic additions to π systems. Indeed gold has proved to be an effective catalyst for many reactions for which a catalyst had not been previously identified, and many new discoveries are still expected.

Source : Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Volume 45, Issue 47

Although gold is generally regarded as a very unreactive metal, nanoscale gold has been found to be exceptionally active as a catalyst. But the precise nature of the active sites and the mechanisms of the catalysed reactions of gold are as yet unknown.

Also see Metallic catalystsplugin-autotooltip__plain plugin-autotooltip_bigMetallic catalysts

The history of using metallic catalysts to speed up chemical reactions goes back to the mid 1800s. They typically make reaction rates many thousands of times faster.

Without metallic catalysts, many current-day commercial reaction processes would be impractically slow.