Zirconium complexes with mono-substituted tetrahydroindenyl-type ligands: preparation and application to propene synthesis

Metallocene complexes are well established highly active single-center catalysts for the homo- and co-polymerisation of 1-olefins. Their importance lies also in the fact that little changes in their molecular architecture lead to polymers with remarkably different properties. We have recently reported a new synthetic pathway that has proved successful for a versatile and "tuned" synthesis of a variety of bicyclic cyclopentadienyl ligands and their corresponding organometallic compounds in good yields, with only minor purification steps, and reproducible in large-scale quantities. These new complexes allowed us to study in more detail structure/activity relationships in propene polymerisation depending on the simultaneous effect of the type of ring fused to the cyclopentadienyl moiety and on the substituent in position 2.