The polyolefin challenges: catalyst and process design, tailor-made materials, high-throughput development and data mining

Abstract

Progress in catalytic olefin polymerization has led to the development of environmentally friendly and versatile polymeric materials which meet the demands of sustainable development and serve the needs of modem technologies. Polymer architectures and property profiles are tailored as a function of catalyst structures and process conditions. The scope of single site catalyst technology has been expanded well beyond that of metallocene-based systems to produce novel families of 1-olefin, styrene, diene and cycloolefin polymers, ranging from engineering plastics to flexible packaging and rubbers. Short- and long chain branches are introduced via copolymerization and chain walking in order to control polymer crystallization and polymer processing. Novel group 10 catalyst generations tolerate functional comonomers and afford aqueous polyethylene dispersions. Computer sciences, engineering and information technology are combined to exploit the potential of combinatorial chemistry and on-line monitoring in high-throughput catalyst and polymer development. Data mining tools track correlations (fingerprints) between spectroscopic data, process parameters and catalyst as well as polyolefin properties, thus promoting high throughput development, modeling, rapid on-line analyses, as well as quality assurance. Selected recent advances are reviewed to highlight trends and opportunities in polyolefin science and technology.