Manganese oxide mineral phases produced at room temperature under acidic conditions investigated with XRD, TEM, SEM, EDS, and BET

This thesis concerns characterization of synthetic manganese oxides belonging to mineral phases known as Birnessite and Cryptomelane. Presented here are the results of an experiment designed to examine the influence of sodium, potassium, chloride, and sulfate ions on the reduction of potassium permanganate under acidic conditions at room temperature to produce Birnessite and Cryptomelane. The experiments used KMnO4 as the source of Mn and the resulting Birnessite and Cryptomelane precipitates were washed with 18 MO/cm NANOpure water at the end of syntheses. Several state-of-the-art solid state techniques were used to characterize the Mn-based oxide mineral phases. Based on the literature review, our prior research, and solid state characterization of the final products, some correlations between the reactions and the resulting mineral phases that were formed have been explored in the discussion section.