(CO)Polyolefin-based nanocomposites via carbon nanotube-supported metallocene catalysis

Due to their remarkable and unique electronic and mechanical properties, carbon nanotubes (CNT) have been used recently as reinforcing materials for polymers since their exceptional mechanical properties, combined with their low density, offer tremendous opportunities for the development of fundamentally new material systems. However, the keychallenge remains to reach a high level of nanoparticles dissociation (i.e., to break down the ropes of aggregated carbon nanotubes) as well as a fine dispersion upon melt blending within the selected matrices. Among the various disaggregating strategies studied, some of us recently reported an efficient process allowing for complete destructuration of the native filler aggregates via the so-called "polymerization-filling technique" (PFT).1 Purposely, CNTs were coated by a thin polyethylene layer as obtained by in situ polymerization process catalyzed directly from the nanofiller surface. The focus of this contribution is to complement our previous efforts by describing the in situ (co)polymerization/coating reaction via either copolymerization with various monomers (i.e., 2-norbornene and 1-hexene), or tandem catalyzed ethylene polymerization process.