Study on Catalytic Behavior of Iron-based Catalyst with IITP as Electron Donor in the Polymerization of Butadiene

In this study, a novel iron-based catalyst system, Fe(acac)3/(isocyanoimino) triptenylphosphorane (IITP)/AlR3, was employed for the synthesis of syndiotactic 1,2-polybutadiene in hexane. This catalyst system exhibits remarkably high catalytic activity, achieving a polymerization activity of 762 kgpolymer·molcatalyst−1·h−1 at 50 °C with a [BD]/[Fe] molar ratio of 20000. Furthermore, living polymerization characteristic were observed during the investigation of the polymerization kinetics of 1,3-butadiene polymerization. These characteristics were well demonstrated by a narrow molecular weight distribution (PDI≈2.0) of the resulting polybutadiene and a linear relationship between–ln(1 − c) and polymerization time as well as number average molecular weight and polymer yield. The resultant polymer showed a 1,2-selectivity of approximately 76