TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - ELECTRICAL POWER AND ENERGY - Preferred Components: The atomically thin outer shell of gold is atomic submonolayer, monolayer, bilayer, and/or trilayer of gold atoms.    TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - INORGANIC CHEMISTRY - Preferred Materials: The electrically conductive support is carbon-based such as carbon black, graphitized carbon, graphite, activated carbon, or carbon nanotubes.    TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - METALLURGY - Preferred Materials: The outer shell is made of atomic submonolayer gold optionally with other alloying metals such as palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, and/or osmium. The noble metal-containing core has homogenous composition comprised of platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, rhenium, osmium, and ruthenium. It can be solely made of platinum, or mixture of platinum and palladium, or platinum in combination with palladium, rhodium, iridium, rhenium, osmium, gold, or ruthenium. It may be comprised of inner sub-core comprising palladium encapsulated by atomically thin outer sub-shell of platinum. It may also be comprised of inner sub-core comprised of first row transition metals encapsulated by outer sub-shell comprised of platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, rhenium, osmium, and/or ruthenium. The first row transition metals are iron, cobalt, or nickel. Preferred Parameters: The gold-coated metal particles have a size of 1-100 (preferably 5) nm.    TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - ORGANIC CHEMISTRY - Preferred Materials: The electrically conductive support is carbon-based such as fullerene. Preferred Components: The fuel source is hydrogen gas that is generated from reformed methanol, methane, or gasoline. It can be alcohol such as methanol. EXAMPLE - A submonolayer-to-monolayer of gold was placed on platinum nanoparticles such that the gold-coated platinum electrocatalyst has positively shifted platinum oxidation. Such a positively shifted platinum oxidation would account for the increase in stability observed for the gold-coated platinum electrocatalyst. It was noted that the oxygen reduction of platinum covered by submonolayer-to-monolayer of gold occurs with almost identical kinetics for platinum. The electrocatalytic activity of platinum in these gold-coated electrocatalysts remained intact and was not compromised by gold coating.