Living Chain-Walking (Co)Polymerization of Propylene and 1-Decene by Nickel α- Diimine Catalysts

Pei Li; Xiaotian Li; Shabnam Behzadi; Mengli Xu; Fan Yu; Guoyong Xu; Fuzhou Wang

doi:10.3390/polym12091988

Living Chain-Walking (Co)Polymerization of Propylene and 1-Decene by Nickel α- Diimine Catalysts

Polymers (Basel). 2020 Aug 31;12(9):1988. doi: 10.3390/polym12091988.

Authors

Pei Li¹, Xiaotian Li¹, Shabnam Behzadi², Mengli Xu¹, Fan Yu¹, Guoyong Xu¹, Fuzhou Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Institutes of Physical Science and Information Technology, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China.
² CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.

Abstract

Homo- and copolymers of propylene and 1-decene were synthesized by controlled chain-walking (co)polymerization using phenyl substituted α-diimine nickel complexes activated with modified methylaluminoxane (MMAO). This catalytic system was found to polymerize propylene in a living fashion to furnish high molecular weight ethylene-propylene (EP) copolymers. The copolymerizations proceeded to give high molecular weight P/1-decene copolymers with narrow molecular weight distribution (M_w/M_n ≈ 1.2), which indicated a living nature of copolymerization at room temperature. The random copolymerization results indicated the possibility of precise branched structure control, depending on the polymerization temperature and time.

Keywords: 1-alkene; branched polyolefins; chain-walking; living (co)polymerization; propylene.

Abstract

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