Formation of manganite fibers under the directing of cationic surfactant

The effects of organic molecules on the morphology control of inorganic materials in the process of biomineralization have long been realized. Nowadays, these effects have been utilized to prepare inorganic materials with desired morphologies in different systems. In this paper, manganite (MnOOH) fibers are chemically synthesized under extremely low surfactant (cetyltrimethylammonium bromide CTAB) concentrations at basic conditions. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) are used to characterize the products. Characterization of samples aged for different time shows that the formation of MnOOH fibers is intimately related to a layered structured manganese oxide. A corresponding transformation mechanism is proposed based on the experiment results, and it could be inferred that CTAB plays an important directing role in this process.