High-Throughput Screening in Olefin-Polymerization Catalysis: From SerendipitousDiscovery Towards Rational Understanding

摘要

High–throughput-screening (HTS) tools and methods are used more and more, especially inindustry, in the search for new, selective organometallic catalysts. In most cases, the approachis, in essence, empirical, and the strategy is to increase the number of experiments that can berun at a given place in a given time. Highly miniaturized, parallel reaction setups have beenimplemented for the rapid assessment of whether novel catalysts resulting from the structuralamplification of a basic framework are ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘bad’’ with respect to the properties ofinterest, and, depending on the response,worthy of a subsequent, more-careful evaluation.In this article, we demonstrate that it ispossible to utilize these state-of-the-art HTSplatforms with a different strategy: the rapidgeneration of reliable kinetic data for mechanisticstudies in view of a thorough understandingand rational catalyst design. Ziegler–Natta-type catalytic olefin polymerization willbe used throughout as an example.