Catalysts, anionic coordinative metallocenes

An active catalyst site requires a metal-carbon bond that may have existed in the pre-catalyst, may have been formed upon initial activation by cocatalyst (via ligand exchange), or may exist because of a previous migratory insertion event. In most cases, the starting precursor of the catalyst is a metallocene dichloride (dichlorides are usrraUy the most artive precursors for coordination polymerization) complex, which obtains a vacant site as a consequence of reaction with cocatalyst (see Section 3.21.3.1 below). In the case of metallocene activation by MAO, the produced active center is a strongly Lewis acidic cationic metal complex stabilized by a bulky MAO anion the transition metal bears a vacant coordination site ready for complexation of the olefinic monomer (Figure 4(a)). 

Figure 34 A polymer-supported metallocene catalyst (51) with a weakly coordinating anion, [B(C6F5)4] , produced from lightly cross-linked, chloromethylated polystyrene beads for olefin polymerization. (Adapted from ref. 75.)...

The active species of the metallocene/MAO catalyst system have now been established as being three-coordinated cationic alkyl complexes [Cp2MR] + (14-electron species). A number of cationic alkyl metallocene complexes have been synthesized with various anionic components. Some structurally characterized complexes are presented in Table 4 [75,76], These cationic Group 4 complexes are coordinatively unsaturated and often stabilized by weak interactions, such as agostic interactions, as well as by cation-anion interactions. Under polymerization conditions such weak interactions smoothly provide the metal sites for monomers. 

The use of weakly coordinating and fluorinated anions such as B(C6H4F-4)4, B(C6F5)4, and MeB(C6F5)3 further enhanced the activities of Group 4 cationic complexes for the polymerization of olefins and thereby their activity reached a level comparable to those of MAO-activated metallocene catalysts. Base-free cationic metal alkyl complexes and catalytic studies on them had mainly been concerned with cationic methyl complexes, [Cp2M-Me] +. However, their thermal instability restricts the use of such systems at technically useful temperatures. The corresponding thermally more stable benzyl complexes,... 

The active species generated when bis(arylimino)pyridine iron (5) and cobalt (6) halides are activated with MAO was, by analogy with metallocene catalysts, initially considered to be a highly reactive mono-methylated cobalt(II) or iron(II) cation of the form LM-Me+ bearing a weakly coordinating counter-anion such as [X-MAO]-(X = halide, Me). To examine this theory a number of spectroscopic investigations have been directed towards identifying the active species (vide infra). 

The data discussed in Sections 8.5 and 8.6 make it clear that in the low-dielectric media typically employed for polymerisation reactions, the counteranions in metallocene ion pair catalysts are closely associated with the cationic complex as either inner-sphere or outer-sphere ligands. If anions are coordinated in the transition state, they must be expected to exert a significant influence on the stereochemistry of alkene polymerisation, even though the formation of syndiotactic and isotactic 1-alkenes have been readily explained by considering only the cationic metallo-cenium species and their ligand structure [21, 23, 122, 132, 133]. 

This model would explain the inability of metallocene-alkylaluminium halide systems to promote the polymerisation of propylene and higher a-olefins [94] it is obvious that there is insufficient capability of the more weakly coordinating a-olefins to form reactive, olefin-separated ion pairs by displacement of an aluminate anion from the metal centre. At any rate, the limitation of homogeneous catalysts to the polymerisation of only ethylene was a crucial obstacle to progress in this field for many years. This impediment was fortunately overcome, however, by a series of serendipitous observations [90-95, 100,101,103] that led, around the 1980s, to the discovery by Kaminsky, Sinn et al. [90, 91,94,95,100,101] that metallocenes are activated for catalysing the polymerisation of propylene and other a-olefins (without a, a-disubstituted olefins) by methylaluminoxane [30],... 

Keys to the high polymerization activities of single-site catalysts are the cocatalysts. MAO is most commonly used and is synthesized by controlled hydrolysis of trimethyl aluminum. Other bulky anionic complexes which show a weak coordination, such as borates, also play an increasingly important role. One function of the cocatalysts is to form a cationic metallocene and an anionic cocatalyst species. Another function of MAO is the alkylation of halogenated metallocene complexes. In the first step, the monomethyl compound is formed within seconds, even at -60°C (69). Excess MAO leads to the dialkylated species, as shown by NMR measurements. For the active site to form, it is necessary that at least one alkyl group be bonded to the metallocene (70). 

The active species in B(C6F5)3-activated metallocene catalysts is an ion pair, consisting of an electron-deficient cation, such as [Cp2ZrMe]+, stabilised by a weakly coordinating anion, here [MeB(C6F5)3]". One aspect of our research recently has been the attempt of building the Lewis acidic activator function into the metallocene precursor complex, in an effort to synthesise self-activating systems. The principle is illustrated... 

Among the aforementioned abstractors MAO- or MM AO-promoted reactions are complicated, and intractable species are produced. Despite the elusiveness of MAO and MMAO, the reaction of metallocene dialkyls with electrophiles which either generate or contain very weakly coordinating anions has proved a particularly successful strategy for the generation of highly active, MAO-free polymerization catalysts. Marks reported isolable and X-ray crystallographically characterizable catalysts for study of the molecular basis of this type of polymerization catalysis [30]. 

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