Atomistic chemical computation of Olefin polymerization reaction catalyzed by (pyridylamido)hafnium(IV) complex: Application of Red Moon simulation.

ABSTRACT

We have realized the microscopic simulation of olefin polymerization, that is, the simulation of the catalytic polymerization (CP) reaction system composed of (pyridylamido)hafnium(IV) complex as the catalyst. For this purpose, we adopted Red Moon (RM) method, a novel molecular simulation method to simulate the complex reaction system. First, according to the previous research, with the help of the QM calculation, we proposed a model system and elementary processes and explained the theoretical treatment of the simulation by the RM method (the RM simulation). In addition, we also proposed a macroscopic simulation based on chemical kinetics simulation. Then, we performed two simulations and compared them in terms of the effective time evolution of the three macroscopic physical quantities, the number-average molecular weight Mn , the mass-average molecular weight Mw , and the molar-mass dispersity DM . The comparison showed that the two simulations are in quantitative or partially qualitative agreement with each other. Therefore, it is concluded that the RM simulation could not only simulate the CP reaction process microscopically, but also it is connected essentially to reproduce the time evolution of the macroscopic physical quantities on the basis of its microscopic simulation data. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.