A Versatile Ligand Platform for Palladium- and Nickel-Catalyzed Ethylene Copolymerization with Polar Monomers.

The ability to carry out transition-metal-catalyzed copolymerizations of olefins with polar monomers is a great challenge in the field of olefin polymerization. Palladium has been the dominant player in this field, while its low-cost nickel counterpart has only achieved very limited success. We report the synthesis and evaluation of a highly versatile platform based on diphosphazane monoxide ligands. Both palladium and nickel catalysts bearing these ligands mediate the copolymerization of ethylene with a number of fundamental polar monomers.