A new catalyst for sustainable chemistry

The alpha-olefins, consisting of carbon and hydrogen, are the most important precursors in the chemical industry. Researchers at the University of Bayreuth now present a discovery in the journal "Science" that opens up previously unimagined prospects for the design and the selective as well as sustainable production of these chemical products. They have developed a highly selective catalyst that for the first time makes it possible to produce, using ethylene, a potentially infinite number of variations of alpha-olefins with pinpoint accuracy. Until now, such selective production methods were only available for three alpha-olefins. The new catalyst is based on titanium, one of the most abundant metals in the Earth's crust. "Our publication is likely to spark a large number of research projects that will use our catalyst or structurally similar catalysts to selectively produce very differently structured alpha-olefins, and deploy these, in turn, as the starting materials for innovative products. Until now, alpha-olefins could only be produced in mixtures of ethylene, with three exceptions.