Therefore, for the synthesis of colloidal CeO2, appropriate surfactants and reaction system are crucially important for

controlling the nucleation and growth of the crystal, as well as the crystal shape and the monodispersity of CeO2. In the past fewyears, some effectivemeth- Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 21 54743262; fax: +86 21 54741297.E-mail address: xfqian@sjtu.edu.cn (X. Qian). ods have been developed to prepare monodispersed CeO2 with different shapes. For example, nanocubes were prepared by twostep precipitation using OLA (oleic acid) as a capping agent [25], nanopolyhedrals and nanocubeswere synthesized via the decanoic acid assisted supercritical hydrothermal process at 400 C [26] and nanopolyhedrons were obtained by the thermolysis reaction of cerium benzoylacetonatecomplex in oleic acid/oleylamine solvents under vacuum condition at 310330 C [27]. However, these above methods required complicated procedure, special equipments or organometallic precursor. So it still remains a great challenge to fabricate ceria nanocrystals with uniform size and well-defined crystal shape by a simple and economical method. Herein, we report a facile method to synthesize monodispersed nanocubic CeO2 through the solvothermal process with CeCl37H2O and H2O as a starting material and hexadecylamine as a capping ligand. It is believed that this method can be developed into a general way to synthesize other metal oxides nanocubes. Furthermore, the electrochemical and photocatalytic properties of the obtained samples are examined and studied.

Metal nanoparticle-chitosan (NPs-chitosan) bioconjugates were formed by exposure of chitosan to an aqueous solution of metal salts under thermal

treatment. The metal nanoparticles that are formed strongly bound to chitosan, which encouraged us to investigate their catalytic performance. It was demonstrated that the metal NPs-chitosan bioconjugates functioned as effective catalysts for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol in the presence of NaBH(4), which was monitored by means of spectrophotometry as a function of reaction time. The silver NPs-chitosan bioconjugates exhibited excellent catalytic activity and were reusable for up to seven cycles. In contrast, the gold NPs-chitosan catalyst displayed poor catalytic activity, even in the second cycle. A highlight of our approach is that chitosan simultaneously acts as an active support for the synthesis and assembly of nanoparticles, and the resultant bioconjugates bear the advantage of easy separation from the reaction medium.
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