Manganese oxide is used for a catalyst in organic chemistry, as electrodes for lithium ion batteries, and as a magnetic material. When manganese oxide is in a form of nano-size whiskers, it shows higher activity and efficiency. In this study, nano-size whiskers of manganese oxide prepared by the soft chemistry templating synthesis method, were characterized by electron microscopy and spectroscopy. It was found that nanowhiskers grew three dimensionally from nanoparticles of Mn3O4. The structure and chemistry of whiskers were analyzed using transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, and energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry. It was found that whiskers contained point defects and atomic ratio of oxygen to manganese varied in a range of 0.7-1.6.

Keywords: Nanowhiskers, Scanning, Transmission, And high resolution electron microscopy, X-ray spectrometry.