Structure-property characteristics of ethylene/1-hexene copolymers with tailored short chain branching distributions

Recently, we have developed a metallocene catalyst system that can produce polyethylene and ethylene/alpha -olefin copolymers with tailored molecular weight and short chain branching distributions. Ethylene/1-hexene copolymers produced with this system have narrow molecular weight distributions as expected from metallocene catalysts. However, these copolymers are quite unique in that their short chain branching distributions are broad and sometimes bimodal, similar to Ziegler-Natta LLDPE. To examine the effect of these broad short chain branching distributions on the polymer properties, tensile and viscosity characteristics were measured. It was found that the tensile properties of these broad distributions could be controlled by the relative amounts of each species. In this study, the best tensile properties were achieved with a distribution that contained a large proportion of crystalline material and a small fraction of lower crystalline material. It was also found that the distribution of short chain branches can have an effect on the viscosity behaviour of these copolymers.