The influence of the oxygen donor capacity of polystearylmethacrylate over polyethylene bulk density when using modified methylaluminoxane as co-catalyst

In this work, the interaction between a polystearylmethacrylate (Mn = 8,900 g mol-1, Xn = 26, Ð = 1.1) and modified methylaluminoxane 12 (MMAO-12) co-catalyst is studied using different spectroscopic methods. The effect of this oxygen-donor additive was measured by the changes in the bulk density of the raw polyethylene, which resulted increased respect to those obtained in blank reactions. A decrease in the activity was also observed as a penalty for the improvement of the bulk density, enhancing the possibility of reducing fouling. The coordination of the carbonyl oxygen groups of polystearylmethacrylate to aluminum (III) centers is confirmed by 1H-NMR and FTIR studies, and by a simple semi-empirical computational calculation. A method for obtaining a tri-component co-catalyst mixture is described using the methyl-bridging capacity of trimethylaluminum and its Lewis acidity to get the polystearylmethacrylate and MMAO-12 linked together. This robust adduct introduces a hierarchy over the PE chain growing, leading to higher bulk densities for PE beads (0.43 g cm-3) concerning blank reactions (0.26 g cm-3).