Element 25-Manganese

Abstract

This essay in a series being published in the Australian Journal of Chemistry concerns this author’s favourite element, manganese. I was introduced to the chemistry of manganese when undertaking postdoctoral work with George Christou at Indiana University. My first reaction involved the disproportionation of manganese(VII) and manganese(II) to give a trinuclear manganese( III) complex. This one reaction encompasses several of the most appealing aspects of inorganic chemistry – the redox chemistry of metals that exist in multiple oxidation states, the change in a metal ion’s properties upon changing the number of valence electrons, the beautifully symmetric structures of polynuclear metal com..