Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

This research proposal is concerned with the development of new catalyst technologies for the production of plastics which allows precise control over a large  range of molecular weights and comonomer incorporation. These targets will be address employing contrived synthetic strategies based on previously successful ancillary ligand selection criteria.     Our approach is to prepare new titanium,  zirconium and hafnium complexes will act as catalysts for the production of polyethylene (the most common form of plastic). By judicous design of the target molecules, the environment of the metal center is contrived so as to give high activity catalysts for the production of a range of oligomers/polymers. It should be noted that this proposal is built on an extremely successful collaboration between academic and industrial partners. The new families of single-site catalysts resulting from this on-going collaboration combined with NOVA Chemicals advanced SCLAIRTECH solution polyethylene process form a basis for the world scale Joffre plant. The industrial partner, NOVA Chemicals Corporation, is a Canadian company and the 6th largest producer of polyethylene in the world.