Design of New Ruthenium Catalysts for Olefin Insertion Polymerization

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

Professor Zhibin Guan of the University of California-Irvine is supported by the Chemical Catalysis Program in the Division of Chemistry to explore the scope of a new family of Ru (II) complexes which his lab recently discovered and showed that they have catalytic activity towards olefin insertion polymerization and copolymerization of alpha-olefins with polar monomers. Plans are presented to achieve higher activities through catalyst tuning based on the design of various new ligand architectures, and on a better understanding of the catalytic system and the reaction mechanism. Computational modeling will be conducted to complement the experimental mechanistic and activity studies. The polymerization activities of the complexes will be correlated with the structures of the catalysts. The trends observed and the insights gained will guide further design of better Ru-based olefin polymerization catalysts. The copolymerization of olefins with polar monomers continues to be a significant challenge and the proposed research has the potential to lead to better routes to functionalized polyolefins and consequently to new polymeric materials with important specialized applications. The proposed research will provide students and postdoctoral researchers with valuable educational experience in organometallic chemistry, polymerization, catalysis, kinetics, and computational science.