Walking catalysts give rise to new molecular structures which can be controlled in various ways by external parameters such as temperature, pressure, and time of reaction. At the same time walking catalysis is a fascinating problem for statistical physics: The catalyst performs a random walk on the molecule, each time it reaches a reactive site there is a probability to extend its own territory. We have shown, using scaling arguments and computer simulations, that this process leads to dendritic structures and finally to dendritic bottle-brush molecules if the time of reaction is sufficiently long. We identify the walking rate which is the ratio of the average number of walking steps taking place between two successive reaction events as the key quantity which characterizes the extension of the dendritic parts (blobs) and the crossover to the bottle-brush regime. The theoretical results are in agreement with experiments on polyolefins obtained from chain-walking catalysis using a Paladium catalyst [1].

Theory of chain walking catalysis: From dendritic to bottle brush molecules

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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