Doped nanomaterials have been involved a significant interest due to their potential applications in environmental, materials, and biological fields. Here, it is prepared doped MnO2-SnO2 nanocubes (NCs) by a wet-chemical process to categorize nanomaterials with practically controlled structure, which represents a continuous morphological improvement and potential metal ions selective detection, Doped NCs are characterized by using XRD, XPS, BET, UV/visible, FTIR, and FESEM coupled XEDS. The efficiency of NCs is investigated for a selective adsorption of Au(III) ions prior to its determination by ICP-OES technique. The selectivity of NCs toward various metal ions was studied. Based on the selectivity, it was found that the selectivity of NCs phase was the most toward Au(III). The static adsorption capacity for Au(III) was determined to be similar to 77.35 mg g(-1). Results of adsorption isotherm also confirmed that the adsorption process was mainly monolayer adsorption onto a surface containing a finite number of adsorption sites. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.