To investigate the possibility of using a one-step hydrolysis process to prepare selective catalytic reduction (SCR) catalyst, a one-step hydrolysis process was introduced to fabricate the MnOx-CeO2 (HP) catalyst. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analysis (BET) were used to characterize the catalysts. The results showed that Mn, Ce and O were uniformly distributed on the bulk and the surface of MnOx-CeO2 pellets (MnOx-CeO2 (HP)). According to XPS analysis, manganese and cerium species co-existed in the oxidation states of Mn4+/Mn3+ and Ce4+/Ce3+ in the MnOx-CeO2 pellets. The BET and XRD results indicated that the interaction between Mn and Ce as "solid solution" occurred in MnOx-CeO2 (HP). It was demonstrated that the uniform MnOx-CeO2 pellets obtained via the hydrolysis process showed higher SCR activity than those prepared via co-precipitation (MnOx-CeO2 (CP)) and combustion (MnOx-CeO2 (CB)) in the temperature range of 80-260 degrees C. Uniform distribution of Mn and Ce, lower atomic binding energies, higher Mn4+/Mn3+ ratio, higher Ce4+/Ce3+ ratio, higher specific surface area, higher O-alpha/O-beta ratio and the defect in the "solid solution" resulted in higher NO conversion for MnOx-CeO2 (HP) than those for MnOx-CeO2 (CP) and MnOx-CeO2 (CB). Therefore, the one-step hydrolysis process is proven to be a good method for synthesizing MnOx-CeO2 for low-temperature SCR. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.