Properties of ethylene 1-octene, 1-tetradecene and 1-octadecene copolymers obtained with Cp(2)ZrCl(2)/MAO catalyst: Effect of composition and comonomer chain length

Copolymers of ethylene and 1-octene, 1-tetradecene and 1-octadecene were synthetized in order to study the effect of the comonomer chain length and amount on density, melting temperature and heat of fusion. They were also compared with the properties of the copolymers obtained with the heterogeneous titanium catalyst. It could be seen that the density/melting -area of the copolymers obtained with the zirconocene catalyst was much broader than with the titanium catalyst. It could also be seen that with the same comonomer content 1-tetradecene gave lower density of the copolymers than 1-octene. However, no difference were seen between the densities of the copolymers obtained with 1-tetradecene and 1-octadecene. The melting temperature of the copolymers was seen to be the lower the longer the comonomer was. In the area of the high branching amount the linear correlation was not in work. It was also shown that the differences in the heat of fusions could only be seen at high amount of branches (> 15 branches/1000C): the longer the comonomer the lower amount of heat was needed to melt the copolymer.