A Fully Integrated High-Throughput Screening Methodology for the Discovery of New Polyolefin Catalysts: Discovery of a New Class of High Temperature Single-Site Group (IV) Copolymerization Catalysts
作者:Thomas R. Boussie、Gary M. Diamond、Christopher Goh、Keith A. Hall、Anne M. LaPointe、Margarete Leclerc、Cheryl Lund、Vince Murphy、James A. W. Shoemaker、Ursula Tracht、Howard Turner、Jessica Zhang、Tetsuo Uno、Robert K. Rosen、James C. Stevens
DOI:10.1021/ja020868k
日期:2003.4.1
For the first time, new catalysts for olefin polymerization have been discovered through the application of fully integrated high-throughput primary and secondary screening techniques supported by rapid polymer characterization methods. Microscale 1-octene primary screening polymerization experiments combining arrays of ligands with reactive metal complexes M(CH2Ph)(4) (M = Zr, Hf) and multiple activation conditions represent a new high-throughput technique for discovering novel group (IV) polymerization catalysts. The primary screening methods described here have been validated using a commercially relevant polyolefin catalyst, and implemented rapidly to discover the new amide-ether based hafnium catalyst [eta(2)-(N,O)-(2-MeO-C6H4)(2,4,6-Me3C6H2)N]Hf(CH2Ph)(3) (1), which is capable of polymerizing 1-octene to high conversion. The molecular structure of I has been determined by X-ray diffraction. Larger scale secondary screening experiments performed on a focused 96-member amine-ether library demonstrated the versatile high temperature ethylene-1-octene copolymerization capabilities of this catalyst class, and led to significant performance improvements over the initial primary screening discovery. Conventional one gallon batch reactor copolymerizations performed using selected amide-ether hafnium compounds confirmed the performance features of this new catalyst class, serving to fully validate the experimental results from the high-throughput approaches described herein.