The ceria nanorods, nanocubes and nano-octahedrons exposed crystal planes of (110)/(100), (100) and (111), respectively, are synthesized via simple hydrothermal method, and characterized by XRD, N-2 adsorption, TEM/HRTEM, Raman, OSC and H-2-TPR. Comparing with nanocubes and nano-octahedrons, the ceria nanorods showed higher surface area, smaller crystallite size, more oxygen vacancies, higher OSC and mobility of oxygen. The catalysis oxidation of DCE and EA was investigated over these ceria exposed well-defined crystal planes for the first time. The results indicated that ceria nanorods showed the highest catalysis activities, followed by nanocubes and nano-octahedrons. Moreover, a possible reaction mechanism for the catalytic oxidation of DCE over the ceria catalyst was proposed. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.