A new route to atactic polypropylene: The second life of premetallocene homogeneous polymerization catalyst

Amorphous atactic polypropylene (PP) with an average molecular weight of 50,000–100,000 is produced by polymerizing propylene with a ternary Ti(Oiso-Pr)4 - AlEt2Cl/MgBu2 catalyst at 30–50 °С. Main advantages of this catalyst compared with other catalysts capable of nearly exclusively producing atactic PP (such as some heterogeneous Ziegler-Natta, metallocene and postmetallocene catalysts) are high activity, low cost and the ease of use: the catalyst is prepared in situ from three commercially available compounds readily soluble in aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2015, 53, 2124–2131