A small amount of NiO was deposited on mesoporous Al2O3 using atomic layer deposition and was subsequently annealed at different temperatures. We show that all of the samples prepared here show substantially high catalytic activity for CO oxidation near room temperature. Furthermore, as the pre-annealing temperature increased, an enhanced resistance toward poisoning during CO oxidation was observed. Particularly, the samples pre-annealed at 525 and 600 degrees C showed almost no change in the CO oxidation reactivity for 12 h at 30 degrees C, and they are structurally stable at the temperature higher than 500 degrees C. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.