Polymers (Oct 2015)

Reactivity Comparison of ω-Alkenols and Higher 1-Alkenes in Copolymerization with Propylene Using An Isospecific Zirconocene-MMAO Catalyst

  • Benard Oloo Nyangoye,
  • Tianyou Li,
  • Long Chen,
  • Zhengguo Cai

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/polym7101496
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 10
pp. 2009 – 2016

Abstract

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Copolymerizations of propylene with ω-alkenols (aluminum-protected 5-hexene-1-ol (AH) and 10-undecene-1-ol (AU)) and non-polar analogues (1-hexene and 1-dodecene) were conducted with a rac-[Me2Si(2-Me-4-Ph-Ind)2]ZrCl2 activated by modified methylaluminoxane. The catalytic system showed high activity for each copolymerization, of which value was independent on the comonomer used and decreased with the increase of the comonomer concentration. The comonomer content of the copolymers obtained also decreased with the increase of the comonomer concentration in each copolymer. The evaluation of the monomer reactivity ratios indicates a preference for the propylene insertion regardless of the last inserted monomer unit in growing polymer chain in all the copolymerizations. The relative reactivity of ω-alkenols was however significantly lower than that of non-polar analogues. These results suggested that the aluminum protection of polar monomer do not affect the activity of copolymerization but significantly decrease the comonomer reactivity.

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