ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some peculiarities of the poly- and copolymerizations of olefins (mainly of ethylene and propylene), dienes (butadiene and isoprene), acetylenes. It summarizes all the main results for copolymerization of a-olefins with polar monomers, and for radical polymerization of vinyl-type monomers. Metal complexes bound to a polymer support most frequently induce ionic polymerization of olefins, dienes and acetylenes, and less commonly radical polymerization of vinyl-type monomers, acting at all reaction stages: initiation, chain propagation and termination. Active sites for the addition of monomer molecules to the growing polymer chain can in many cases be regenerated yielding new polymer chains. In catalysis by gel-immobilized systems one should aim to use all active centers dispersed throughout the total polymer volume. This can be achieved by the use of swelling, rather than insoluble polymers in the reaction mixture, that are permeable to catalyst components, substrate and solvent molecules, so-called “mosaic” gel polymers.
