Design of New Ruthenium Catalysts for Olefin Insertion Polymerization

加州大学欧文分校的Zhibin Guan教授得到化学系化学催化项目的支持，探索他的实验室最近发现的一个新的Ru（II）络合物家族的范围，并表明它们对烯烃插入聚合和α-烯烃与极性单体的共聚具有催化活性。计划提出，以实现更高的活动，通过催化剂调整的基础上设计的各种新的配体架构，并在更好地了解催化体系和反应机理。将进行计算建模，以补充实验机制和活性研究。配合物的聚合活性与催化剂的结构有关。观察到的趋势和获得的见解将指导更好的Ru基烯烃聚合催化剂的进一步设计。 烯烃与极性单体的共聚仍然是一个重大的挑战，所提出的研究有可能导致更好的路线官能化聚烯烃，因此，新的聚合物材料具有重要的专门应用。拟议的研究将为学生和博士后研究人员提供宝贵的教育经验，在有机金属化学，聚合，催化，动力学和计算科学。

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.