The polyolefin challenges: Catalyst and process design, tailor-made materials, high-throughput development and data mining

Progress in catalytic olefin polymerization has led to the development of e nvironmentally friendly and versatile polymeric materials which meet the de mands of sustainable development and serve the needs of modem technologies. Polymer architectures and property profiles are tailored as a function of catalyst structures and process conditions. The scope of single site cataly st technology has been expanded well beyond that of metallocene-based syste ms to produce novel families of 1-olefin, styrene, diene and cycloolefin po lymers, ranging from engineering plastics to flexible packaging and rubbers . Short- and long chain branches are introduced via copolymerization and "c hain walking" in order to control polymer crystallization and polymer proce ssing. Novel group 10 catalyst generations tolerate functional comonomers a nd afford aqueous polyethylene dispersions. Computer sciences, engineering and information technology are combined to exploit the potential of combina torial chemistry and on-line monitoring in high-throughput catalyst and pol ymer development. Data mining tools track correlations ("fingerprints") bet ween spectroscopic data, process parameters and catalyst as well as polyole fin properties, thus promoting high throughput development, modeling, rapid on-line analyses, as well as quality assurance. Selected recent advances a re reviewed to highlight trends and opportunities in polyolefin science and technology.