Enhancement on Hemilabile Phosphine-Amide Palladium and Nickel Catalysts for Ethylene (Co)Polymerization with Polar Monomers Using a Cyclizing Strategy

To address the issue of hemilabile catalyst in olefin polymerization catalysis, a cyclizing strategy was used to construct novel N-bridged phosphine-carbonyl palladium and nickel catalysts, resulting in improvements on ethylene (co)polymerizations. The N-bridged phosphine-carbonyl Pd catalysts (Pd1?Pd5) and Ni catalysts (Ni1?Ni5) bearing five- to eight-membered-ring structures were designed and synthesized. Catalytic performance for ethylene (co)polymerization became better as the size of N-containing bridge increased. The seven-membered-ring bridged catalysts Pd4 and Ni4 exhibited the best performance in terms of catalytic activity, polymer molecular weight and incorporation of acrylates and acrylic acid. The better performance of these catalysts bearing larger-size bridges was tentatively attributed to the methylene-induced higher electron density around nitrogen, which strenghtens the coordination of carbonyl group to metal center, and also to the steric effect offered by this cyclization. This work provides a new strategy to enhance hemilabile polymerization catalysts.