A Distinctive Technological Approach for the Preparation of Dispersed and Fibrous Nano-Structured Manganese Dioxide Using the SHS Method

Production of nanoscale catalytic materials is an urgent technological challenge. Catalysts have a wide range of applications, such as for neutralizing nuclear waste, decontaminating water polluted with mercury, purifying the atmosphere from various micro-particles, in molecular sieves, and in chemical synthesis, oil refining, etc. Another important application of nanostructured materials is in rechargeable batteries and fuel cells, where their high specific surface area is essential to ensure the speed and effectiveness of the interactions between different materials. Active nanostructured materials with a sufficiently high density of controlled surface defects meet these requirements well and, therefore, offer significant potential for optimizing the high energy consumption in batteries. Currently, the particle size of natural and industrially synthesized manganese oxide materials is typically in the micron range or larger. From perspectives, the most developed and promising methods for synthesizing manganese dioxide are ion exchange, hydrothermal, electrolytic, and chemical synthesis. In this work, a distinctive method for synthesizing nanostructured manganese dioxide is proposed, described, and analyzed. Experiments were conducted to determine the optimal synthesis routes using the Self-propagating High-temperature Synthesis (SHS) method, as a distinctive technological approach that uses manganese ore enrichment waste as raw material and ammonium chloride as a pretreatment chemical agent.