title: Tailoring iron complexes for ethylene oligomerization and/or polymerization.
abstract: Recent progress in the use of iron-based complex pre-catalysts for ethylene reactivity is reviewed, illustrating the current state-of-the-art and the potential usefulness of such systems for delivering solely ethylene oligomerization or polymerization products. The problems associated with the industrial use of late transition metal complex pre-catalysts are generally regarded as catalyst deactivation and the formation of more products of lower molecular weight at elevated temperature. These problems have been addressed for iron-based complex pre-catalysts via the fine tuning of substituents of existing ligands and/or the design of new ligand sets. Results revealed that modified bis(imino)pyridyliron dichlorides were capable of operating at elevated temperatures, and were capable of delivering highly linear polyethylene. Other new models of iron complexes have achieved high activity for ethylene oligomerization and/or polymerization. Particularly successful has been the use of the 2-iminophenanthrolyliron pre-catalyst, which have now been utilized in a 500 tonne pilot plant.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Engineering Plastics, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Wenjuan
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Wen-Hua
authors.initials: WH
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Carl
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Redshaw
mesh_terms: D002384:Catalysis; D005030:Ethylenes / Q000737:chemistry*; D005296:Ferrous Compounds / Q000737:chemistry*; D015394:Molecular Structure; D058105:Polymerization
chemical_list: D005030:Ethylenes; D005296:Ferrous Compounds; C036216:ethylene