A novel catalytic system to prepare branched polyethylene with single catalyst activated by two different co-catalysts is reported in this paper via the tandem catalysis,with ethylene as single monomer.Such catalytic system is composed of β-diketonate zirconium complexes,i.e.(acac)2ZrCl2(Ⅰ)and(dbm)2ZrCl2(Ⅱ)as catalyst precursors,diethylaluminium chloride(AlEt2Cl)as a co-catalyst for ethylene oligomerization and methylaluminoxane(MAO)as another one for the in situ copolymerization with ethylene.The oligomers obtained were mainly α-olefins,and the contents of them in weight were 76.84 for Ⅰ and 65.99 for Ⅱ,while the part being able to be copolymerized was 62.12 and 55.32 for Ⅰ and Ⅱ,respectively.The branched polyethylene via in situ copolymerization of ethylene was prepared by the tandem catalytic system Ⅰ/AlEt2Cl/MAO or Ⅱ/AlEt2Cl/MAO.13C NMR spectrum reveals that the resultant copolymer was branched polyethylene with total branches of 2.1/1000C,including ethyl group of 1.2/1000C,butyl group of 0.8/1000C and longer branches of 0.1/1000C.With increasing the molar ratio of AlEt2Cl to MAO,the melting temperature of the polymer obtained decreased from 133.7 to 116.7 ℃ for Ⅰ/AlEt2Cl/MAO and from 131.7 to 118.8 ℃ for Ⅱ/AlEt2Cl/MAO as well as the change of crystallinity.The catalytic activities for catalyst Ⅰ/AlEt2Cl/MAO and Ⅱ/AlEt2Cl/MAO were from 2.48×104 to 0.10×104 g PE/(mol Zr·h)and from 1.00×104 to 0.32×104 g PE/(mol Zr·h),respectively.The results indicate that the branched polyethylene can be obtained by such a catalytic system.
