Catalyzed Polymerization of a-Olefins

The properties of polypropylenes depend mainly on the regio- and stereospecificity of the inserted propylene units which influence the microstructure. The microstructure of polypropylene in terms of the enchainment of 

Generally, metallocenes favor consecutive primary insertions as a consequence of their bent sandwich structures. Secondary insertion also occurs to an extent determined by the structure of the metallocene and the experimental conditions (especially temperature and monomer concentration). Secondary insertions cause an increased steric hindrance to the next primary insertion. The active center is blocked and therefore regarded as a resting state of the catalyst (138). The kinetic hindrance of chain propagation by another insertion favors chain termination and isomerization processes. One of the isomerization processes observed in metallocene-catalyzed polymerization of propylene leads to the formation of 1,3-enchained monomer units (Fig. 14) (139-142). The mechanism originally proposed to be of an elimination-isomerization-addition type is now thought to involve transition metal-mediated hydride shifts (143,144). 

A single step of the polymerization is analogous to a diastereoselective synthesis. Thus, to achieve a certain level of chemical stereocontrol, chirality of the catalytically active species is necessary. In metallocene catalysis, chirality may be associated with the transition metal, the ligand, or the growing polymer chain (e.g., the terminal monomer unit). Therefore, two basic mechanisms of stereocontrol are possible (145,146) (i) catalytic site control (also referred to as enantiomorphic site control), which is associated with the chirality at the transition metal or the ligand and (ii) chain-end control, which is caused by the chirality of the last inserted monomer unit. These two mechanisms cause the formation of microstructures that may be described by different statistics in catalytic site control, errors are corrected by the (nature (chirality) of the catalytic site (Bernoullian statistics), but chain-end controlled propagation is not capable of correcting the subsequently inserted monomers after a monomer has been incorrectly inserted (Markovian statistics). 

Atactic polypropylenes are produced in catalysis by C2v-symmetric metallocenes that are achiral, such as Cp2MCl2 or (Me2Si(FLu)2)ZrCl2. The only stereocontrol observed is both of the chain-end type and low because the chiral center of the terminal monomer unit of the growing chain is in the P position as a consequence of the 1,2 insertion of the monomers. A significant influence on the tacticity is observed only at low temperatures, being much more pronounced for titanocenes and hafnocenes than zirconocenes as a consequence of their shorter M-Ca bonds, bringing the chiral p-carbon closer to the active center (147,148). 

Depending on the structure of the metallocene, different polymer microstructures are formed. Generally, among the rigid metallocenes, different structures may be distinguished 152,153), and there are also metallocenes that have fluctuating structures. 

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