Chain Shuttling Catalysis and Olefin Block Copolymers (OBCs)

Abstract

Olefin block copolymers (OBCs) with new-to-the-world properties have recently been made via a process called chain shuttling polymerization. These systems comprise two or more catalysts with differing affinities for comonomer combined with a chain shuttling agent (CSA), which distributes the growing polymer chains among the various catalysts. The result is a unique block copolymer, with statistically distributed block sizes and numbers of blocks per chain. A unique property of the materials is that the melting temperature is nearly independent of the comonomer incorporation, which breaks a seemingly immutable relationship that was long held to be true.