Electronic Supplementary Information Fabrication of Mn 2 O 3 nanorods: An efficient catalyst for selective transformation of alcohols to aldehydes Hasimur Rahaman, Ϯ Radha M. Laha, § Dilip K. Maiti* § and Sujit Kumar Ghosh* Ϯ Ϯ Department of Chemistry, Assam University, Silchar-788011, India § Department of Chemistry, University of Calcutta, Kolkata-700009, India e-mail: dkmchem@caluniv.ac.in; sujit.kumar.ghosh@aus.ac.in ESI 1. Solid state absorption spectrum of manganese oxide The absorption spectral features of the as-synthesized Mn 2 O 3 sample in the solid state are shown in Fig. SI 1. The UV-vis spectrum (panel a) indicates that the absorption is prominent in the visible region that arises due to charge–transfer transition in the manganese oxide nanostructures (P. Patsalas, S. Logothetidis, C. Metaxa, Appl. Phys. Lett. 2002, 81,466-468; A. H. Morhed, M. E. Moussa, S. M. Bedair, R. Leonard, S. X. Liu, N. A. El-Masry, Appl. Phys. Lett. 1997, 75, 2389-2391). A clear band edge at 325 nm is characteristic of Mn-O vibration. The direct band gap energy (E g ) for the manganese oxide superstructures could be determined by fitting the absorption data to the Fig. SI 1. Solid state absorption spectrum of manganese oxide superstructures in polymer-surfactant conjugates. Electronic Supplementary Material (ESI) for RSC Advances. This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015