摘要：

Ethylene/α-olefin copolymer with high comonomer content is one of the most widely used high performance thermoplastic elastomer. It has been found by Dow Chemical Company that the linear olefin block copolymer (OBC) with both “hard” and “soft” segments which was produced by their chain shuttling polymerization technique has much better mechanical properties than the commercial polyolefin elastomer (POE). In the chain shuttling polymerization, at least two different catalysts are required, i.e. one catalyst with high ethylene selectivity to form hard polymer chains, and another catalyst with good copolymerization of ethylene and α-olefin to grow soft amorphous chains. And also a chain shuttling agent is needed to exchange the live polymer chains among active catalyst sites. Certainly, well-defining of the hard-to-soft polymer ratio and the comonomer contents of individual segments are very complicated. On the other hand, kinetic modeling of the controlled/living radical copolymerization has been successfully used by us to design copolymer molecular weight and composition, targeting for novel material properties. For examples, a series of styrene/butyl acrylate copolymers having well-controlled composition distribution along chain backbones, including triblock copolymers which exhibited thermoplastic elastomeric properties, were prepared via a semi-batch reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization, on the basis of a computer-programmed monomer feeding policy. In our current work, a high performance living coordination copolymerization catalyst was synthesized. Ethylene/1-octene living copolymerization behavior was studied and an effective copolymerization kinetic model was established. It was demonstrated that the chain microstructure of olefin copolymers can be precisely controlled through the computer-programmed monomer feeding policies assisted by the kinetic model design. The chain microstructure and the mechanical properties of the ethylene/1-octene random copolymers and block copolymers produced by living coordination polymerization were investigated in comparison with commercial products. The results show that the kinetic modeling of living copolymerization and the designed comonomer feeding policy also provide a powerful tool in the precision synthesis of tailor-made polyolefin thermoplastic elastomers.

 Key Words: Polyolefin Thermoplastic Elastomer, Living Coordination Polymerization, Polymerization Kinetic modeling, Block copolymer
 

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个人简介：

Bogeng Li obtained his all degrees, including Ph.D. from Zhejiang University (ZJU) in chemical engineering. He joined the Chem Eng Dept, ZJU in 1987, and ever worked as a visiting fellow in Chem Eng Dept of Loughborough University, UK

 　　in 1991-1992 and a senior visiting scientist in Chem Eng Dept of MIT, USA in 1998. He was promoted as a full professor in 1994, awarded as a Cheung Kong Professor and received the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2001.

　　He is presently Qiushi Chair Professor and Dean of Engineering of the ZJU, and Associate Editor of Ind. & Eng. Chem. Res., an ACS journal. His research interests include polymer reaction engineering and synthesis of polymer materials. He has

　　published more than 200 papers in international journals, presented more than 10 invited talks in international conferences, and holds more than 30 Chinese patents. Now he is the Chief Scientist of the “973 Program (National Basic Research Program of China)” project “Preparation and Processing of High Performance Thermal Plastic Elastomers”.