Manganese Manganese Manganese is a chemical element with symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is not found as a free element in nature; it is often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese is a metal with important industrial metal alloy uses, particularly in stainless steels. Historically, manganese is named for pyrolusite and other black minerals from the region of Magnesia in Greece, which also gave its name to magnesium and the iron ore magnetite. By the mid-18th century, Swedish-German chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele had used pyrolusite to produce chlorine. Scheele and others were aware that pyrolusite (now known
Manganese(II) oxide Manganese(II) oxide Manganese(II) oxide is an inorganic compound with chemical formula MnO. It forms green crystals. The compound is produced on a large scale as a component of fertilizers and food additives. Like many monoxides, MnO adopts the rock salt structure, where cations and anions are both octahedrally coordinated. Also like many oxides, manganese(II) oxide is often nonstoichiometric: its composition can vary from MnO to MnO. Below 118 K MnO is antiferromagnetic. MnO has the distinction of being one of the first compounds to have its magnetic structure determined by neutron diffraction, the report appearing in 1951. This study showed