University of East Anglia
UEA is one of the top-20 research universities in the UK with some 13,000 students and 5000 employees. The School of Chemistry typically comprises of some 30 academic staff, 40 postdoctoral research assistants and 60-70 PhD students. The annual research budget is in excess of £5M.
Partner expertise:
The School of Chemistry at UEA has over 20 years experience in the synthesis of polymerization catalysts and catalyst activators and the unravelling of catalyst activation mechanisms. For example, the group has been able to demonstrate that suitable tailoring of the activator can lead to increases in polymerisation productivities by one or two orders of magnitude, without the need for the invention of new catalyst precursors. Some of these systems proved to be among the most active polymerisation catalysts ever reported (at least in the open literature). The group is well equipped with facilities for spectroscopic studies on catalysts including MAO systems. The emphasis of the UEA group is on the evaluation of catalyst activators, the comparative determination of catalyst productivities under controlled but realistic polymerisation conditions. Polymerisation kinetic methods are the most sensitive evaluative tool in this context; this aspect of the programme is built on previous work by the UEA group in this area. New technology is now available to speed this process up, notable on-line monitoring of polymerisation reactions and real-time determination of polymer chain growth and molecular weight distributions. Techniques are also available at UEA to study the initial stages in the production of MAO, that is the interaction of TMA with water under well-defined conditions, by a variety of spectroscopic techniques.
Scientist in Charge and the member of the General Assembly:
Prof. Manfred Bochmann
Head of School of Chemistry
Faculty of Science
University of East Anglia
Earlham Road
Norwich
NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
tel. +44 1603 592044
fax +44 1603 592044
e-mail: m.bochmann (at) uea.ac.uk
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