Design of New Ruthenium Catalysts for Olefin Insertion Polymerization

加州大学欧文分校的关志斌教授在化学系化学催化计划的支持下，探索了他的实验室最近发现的一类新的Ru(II)配合物的范围，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。基于各种新的配体结构的设计，以及对催化体系和反应机理的更好的理解，提出了通过调整催化剂来实现更高活性的计划。将进行计算模拟，以补充实验机理和活动研究。络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进一步设计更好的Ru基烯烃聚合催化剂。烯烃与极性单体的共聚仍然是一个巨大的挑战，拟议的研究有可能导致更好的路线，以获得功能化的聚烯烃，从而获得具有重要特殊应用的新型聚合物材料。拟议的研究将为学生和博士后研究人员提供在有机金属化学、聚合、催化、动力学和计算科学方面的宝贵教育经验。

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.