Manganese has attracted a great attention over the last years due to its interesting structural flexibility which made it a very important material in many scientific and industrial fields, such as energy storage devices, biosensors, and catalysis.
Tetragonal pure phase hierarchical α-MnO2 nanotubes were successfully prepared using KMnO4 and HCl (32%) with mole ratio of 1 to 4 respectively, at 140°C for a period of 14 h, then the produced α-MnO2 neutralized, cleaned, and filtered. In separate experiment, Fe2O3 nanoparticles were grown on the cleaned filtered α-MnO2 nanotubes at 150°C for 6 h using Fe(NO3)3.9H2O as iron precursor, the two steps were conducted in Teflon lined hydrothermal reactor.
The prepared α-MnO2 nanotubes and the grown Fe2O3/α-MnO2 were characterized using XRD, FE-SEM, EDS, and TEM techniques.