Given that an enormous amount of ethylene is produced globally each year, new methods to transform this simple alkene into fuels and value-added chemicals is of great industrial interest. Toward advancing such technologies, a series of chromium(III)-PNP, where PNP = bis(diarylphosphino)amine, compounds were prepared and evaluated for their ability to either co-oligomerize ethylene/a-olefins or homo-oligomerize a-olefins in the presence of a methylaluminoxane activator. The catalysts containing o-methoxyphenylphosphino groups selectively incorporate a terminal alkene into a metallocyclopentane intermediate to produce olefins that are extended by four carbon units. Strategies to improve the catalyst efficiency and efforts to obtain a better understanding of the chromium species under catalytically relevant conditions will be discussed.

Selective oligomerization of ethylene and terminal alkenes mediated by chromium-PNP complexes

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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