Synthesis of Hydroxy-Functionalized Cyclic Olefin Copolymer and Its Block Copolymers with Semicrystalline Polyolefin Segments

Synthesis of hydroxy-functionalized cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) is achieved with remarkably high activity (up to 5.96 × 107 g-polymer mol-Ti−1 h−1) and controlled hydroxy group in a wide range (≈17.1 mol%) by using ansa-dimethylsilylene (fluorenyl)(amido)titanium complex. The catalyst also promotes living/controlled copolymerization to afford novel diblock copolymers consisting of hydroxy-functionalized COC and semicrystalline polyolefin sequence such as polyethylene and syndiotactic polypropylene, where the glass transition temperature of the norbornene/10-undecen-1-ol segment and each block length are controlled by comonomer composition and copolymerization time, respectively.