Manganese Applications

Manganese is very important component of many iron containing alloys, especially steel. Manganese is the main additional component of stainless steel alloys. For many alloys it is impossible to substitute manganese by other compounds. Sometimes manganese (less than 10% of Mn) alloys are used for coins production, for example for modern 1 and 2 Euro coins and in modern American dollar coins. This alloy is used in order to match the electrical properties of older coins used in wending machines. Manganese-aluminium-antimony-copper alloys are highly ferromagnetic.

Manganese is used as a component of lithium primary batteries as a Lithium Manganese Dioxide. Due to high stability of this compound, these batteries can be stored for many years with loosing of about 0.5% of stored energy annually.

Manganese ions with different oxidation state are very colourful and can be used for glass colouring. Many manganese-oxygen compounds are quite strong oxidizing agents and widely used in organic chemistry.

In living organisms manganese with oxidation state +2 is involved into many enzymatic reactions. Other oxidation states of manganese are very toxic, which is used in medicine.