Thermal and morphological properties of polyethylene reactor alloys using ZN/BLTM catalytic system

To study on the effect of counterpart catalyst on the final produced polyethylene properties, the polymerizations were carried out under similar condition for catalyst mixing and each catalyst, solely. In this system, each catalyst can be active and produce blend of two or more kind of polymers altogether. A mixture of Ziegler-Natta (ZN) and a binuclear late transition metal (BLTM) catalyst was employed in presence of methylaluminoxane (MAO) and triethylaluminium (TEA) as cocatalyst and impurity scavenger, respectively.A moderate activity observed for ZN/BLTM catalytic system due to counterpart catalyst effect in comparison to ZN and BLTM single catalyst system. SEM Images showed a partially spherical morphology for synthesized polyethylene alloys while there is no distinct shape for obtained polyethylene using each catalyst, separately. The observed morphologies were achieved without prepolymerization. Moreover, DSC thermograms illustrated two distinct melting peaks which can be attributed to each catalyst. Besides, the melting points shifted to lower temperature which can devoted to flux role. Crystallinity degree of polyethylene alloys were 45.8 %while crystallinity for synthesized polyethylene in presence of ZN andBLTM were 53.7% and 24. 1%, respectively.