Polyolefins containing reactive p-methylstyrene groups: From high Tm thermoplastics to low Tg elastomers

T. C. Chung

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper summarizes the experimental results in a new class of polyolefin co- and terpolymers containing `reactive' p-methylstyrene (p-MS) groups, which includes the materials from high Tm thermoplastics to low Tg elastomers. Due to the extraordinary copolymerization capability of metallocene catalysts with constrained ligand geometry, p-MS can be effectively copolymerized with α-olefins (i.e., ethylene, propylene, 1-octene, etc.) to form co- and terpolymers having narrow molecular weight and composition distributions. Comparing with other relative styrenic comonomers, i.e., styrene, o-methylstyrene and m-methylstyrene, p-MS shows significantly higher reactivity in metallocene catalysis. In turn, the incorporated p-MS units in polyolefins are very versatile, which not only can be interconverted to various functional groups, such as -OH, -COOH, anhydride, silane and halides, but also can be conveniently transformed to `stable' anionic initiators for `living' anionic graft-from polymerization reactions. Many new functional polyolefin graft co-polymers have been prepared, containing polyolefin backbone (PE, EP, EO, etc.) and functional polymer side chains, such as PMMA, PAN, PS, etc.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)298-333
Number of pages36
JournalJournal of Elastomers and Plastics
Volume31
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 1999

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Polymers and Plastics
  • Materials Chemistry

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