Homo- and Copolymerization of Norbornene and Styrene with Pd- and Ni-Based Novel Bridge Dinuclear Diimine Complexes and MAO

The beginning of a series of articles about polynuclear catalysis for the polymerisation of ethylene and olefin in general. As I am currently trying to write some of the work done during my PhD studies and I am revisiting my bibliographic introduction.

Macromol. Chem. Phys. 2003, 204, 868–876

Xia Mi, Zhi Ma,1,2 Leyong Wang, Yucai Ke,1 Youliang Hu


In this article, the authors reports the synthesis of group 10 bimetallic (1-4) and the ir screening for the homo- and co-polymerisation of norbornene and that of styrene with norbornene.

Background:

• Norbornene are cyclic unsaturated alkyl that can beused as monomer or comonomer in polymerisation process
• monometallic complexes based on transition metal (Ni, Pd, Cr, Zr, Ti, Co, Fe)

Justification of the work:

• Unprecedented bimetallic catalysts for polymerisation of norbornene (that is for the designof new catalysts)
• the processability can difficult and can be improved by adding some vinyl comonomer (That's for the styrene)

Basically, they try to kill one bird with two stones by trying simulataneously new catalyts and new application in the same paper. Obviously that makes it more difficult to make any valid comparison, but hell that's not always necessary when you have so many new concepts.
In parallele, they try to increase of the use of the word "didentate", after all "bidentate" was also a bit old world...

I'll discuss the resuls tomorrow.