Copolymerization of ethylene with norbornene by using metallocene/TIBA/B(C6F5)3 system

Cyclic olefin copolymer is a type of high-performance polyolefin material, which is prepared by using a single-site catalyst in solution polymerization. The common activator of this system is alkyl aluminoxane or organic  boron/aluminum system. Among them, organic boron is mostly triphenylcarbenium tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)borate or dimethylanilinium tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)borate. In this study, ethylene and norbornene were copolymerized with metallocene catalyst activated with the combination of tris(pentafluorophenyl)boron and triisobutylaluminium. Compared with homopolymerization of ethylene, copolymerization shows high activity. The molecular weight of the polymer increased significantly with the increase of the insertion rate of norbornene. Fineman-Ross method was used to calculate the reactivity ratio, which showed that the reactivity ratio of norbornene was much lower than that of ethylene. The high copolymerization activity may indicate that, although norbornene has a lower coordination probability, its insertion rate is higher than ethylene. The copolymer with higher norbornene incorporation has a higher glass transition temperature, and the relationship between them is linear.