Trends in polyolefin chemistry

Polyolefins have grown faster in recent years than many other polymers. The production of poly(propylene) increased rapidly when it was possible to optimize the isotacticity of the polymer chain. New fields for future polymer sciences are the defined short and long chain branched polyolefins, block copolymers by chain shuttling, living and emulsion polymerization, and polyolefin nanocomposite materials. These research fields will create polymers with new and specific properties and applications in the near future. Compared to the formation of polymers in nature, the possibilities are today very limited for the synthetic chemistry. Especially, there are great deficits in tailoring the microstructure of copolymers with two or more monomers in a well defined way. It will be a great challenge to solve this problem but then it opens up exciting advantages.