As one of the most common supports, silica has been widely used for the preparation of supported catalysts. However, traditional liquid-phase methods are less effective in preparing highly active SiO2 supported noble metal (e.g. Au, Pt, etc.) catalysts for low-temperature oxidation reactions (e.g., CO oxidation) [14]. Nevertheless,some highly active silica supported noble metal catalysts have been recently obtained by carrying out special methods and conditions [15–19]. For example, highly active Au/SiO2 catalysts were successfully prepared by chemical vapor deposition or modified sol–gel approaches for low-temperature CO oxidation [20,21].