New paradigms and technological innovations are required to meet the ever-increasing demands for new polyolefin materials that can support a global population that is expected to reach nearly 10 billion people in less than 35 years time. An added significant challenge is that these new polyolefin materials must be obtained from a very limited pool of commercially-viable olefin monomers. This talk will provide an overview of past and current efforts to develop the living coordinative chain transfer polymerization (LCCTP) of ethene, propene, longer-chain α-olefins and α,ω-non-conjugated dienes for the scalable production of several new families of well-defined polyolefin materials of narrow polydispersity and tunable molecular weights that further exhibit unique and technologically-intriguing physical properties, including: a) low to ultra low molecular weight polyolefins, both with and without a variety of end-group functionalization, b) stimuli-responsive two-state polyolefin block copolymers, c) dynamic nanostructured sugar-polyolefin conjugates, and d) 'designer' phase-change polyolefins. LCCTP is conducted using a very small quantity of active transition-metal initator relative to a large stoichiometric excess of a main group metal alkyl that establishes a population of 'surrogate' active centers due to rapid and reversible chain transfer that is competitive with chain-growth propagation. In this way, practical quantities of these new polyolefin materials can be produced while maintaining all the desired features of a living polymerization.

Expanding the range of polyolefin materials through Living Coordinative Chain Transfer Polymerization (LCCTP)

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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