All chemicals used in this experiment were analytical reagents without further purification and the water used to wash the samples was made from Millipore Milli-Q water(15MΩ cm).
The experiments were carried out in a 250 ml beaker.
Firstly, 1.0 g surfactant was dissolved in 80 ml ethanol to form a transparent solution at room temperature.
Before adding the manganese acetate tetra-hydrate ((CH3COO)2 Mn, 4H2O, 99.9%, 0.08 mol), 5 ml concentrated nitric acid (67wt%) was added into the solution.
The mixture was covered with plastic wrap, and stirred strongly for a few hours until the manganese acetate was dissolved completely.