The principle of the intermittent microwave heating (IMH) method and the details on the working procedure for prepare nanosized materials were presented along with the comparison to the traditional continuous microwave heating (CMH) method The nanosized tungsten carbides were synthesized as an example by this novel method It produced WC with the average particle size of 21 4 nm at the procedure of 15 s-on and 15 s-off for 20 times however the particle size increased to 35 7 nm by CMH method for 5 min The pure WC was obtained by post-treating the sample in NaOH solution which gave the better performance as support The nanosized WC was used as support for the Pt nanoparticles (Pt-WC/C(IMH)) for alcohol oxidation and oxygen reduction It was proved that the Pt-WC/C(IMH)electrocatalysts gave the better performance than that prepared by CMH method (Pt-WC/C(CMH)) or Pt/C electrocatalysts in terms of the activity and CO-tolerance The intermittent microwave heating method is easier to scale-up for mass production of the nanosized tungsten carbides and other nanosized materials as well (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved