Recent Advances in Coordination-Insertion Copolymerization of Ethylene with Polar Functionalized Comonomers

Increasing demand for polar functionalized polyolefins has motivated the development of new polymerization chemistry to introduce functional groups into polyolefins,which is industrially important but scientifically challenging.Coordination-insertion copolymerization of ethylene and polar comonomers offers a direct and economic way to synthesize functionalized polyethylenes and great achievements have been gained by employing catalytic systems based on transition metals and rare earth metals.Continuous efforts have been devoted to developing novel catalytic systems and strategies to introduce chemically diverse functionalities at specific positions,control over the microstructures and get high molecular weight functionalized polyethylenes with high activity and good enchainment capacity.This article summarizes some important advances in the past three years in this field,focusing on the studies using chemically diverse polar comonomers to afford functionalized polyethylenes with novel microstructures.