Friday, May 20, 2011

How Titanium Gets All Touchy-Feely with Carbon

A titanium chloride catalyst holds one end of the growing polymer chain. The same titanium atom simultaneously binds another incoming ethylene and stabilizes the contortions leading to the insertion of the next link into the growing chain. Titanium does this by polarizing ethylene's electrons while stabilizing a migration:


Original is here

Polarization, followed by attack, followed by depolarization...polarization, followed by attack, followed by depolarization...polarization, followed by attack, followed by depolarization... link

6 comments:

  1. Interesting. I never knew this. I'd never given it much thought until now, frankly, but it makes sense.

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  2. When I was in grad school I though Ziegler-Natta chemistry was boring. I liked organometallic chemistry and especially catalysis but olefin polymerization was just too pedestrian. Now I realize that it was just me. It really is something of a marvel. I mean, the titanium isn't adding any energy into the system to do this; it's just acting as a true catalyst-facilitating the possible.

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  3. "Polarization, followed by attack, followed by depolarization...polarization, followed by attack, followed by depolarization...polarization, followed by attack, followed by depolarization"

    Why are you analzing the evil blogger lady's comment section?

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  4. Why are you analzing the evil blogger lady's comment section?

    Just formulating my own little Weltanschauung.

    Move along now. Nothing to see here.

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  5. Took you long enough to find this but yes. I'm looking at you EBL, and your mechanism for polymerizing comments into threads.

    ReplyDelete