Nickel and palladium complexes bearing ortho-phenoxy modified anilido-imine ligands: Drastic steric effect on coordinated geometry, and catalytic property toward olefin polymerization

A series of new nickel complexes and palladium complexes bearing ortho-phenoxy modified anilido-imine ligands have been synthesized and characterized. X-ray diffraction analyses of the single crystal structures reveal that there are no direct metal–O interactions in all of the complexes. The steric hindrance of complexes has an importance influence on their coordinated geometries. The bulky complexes with 2,6-diisopropylphenyl substituent exist as a dimers with bromine-bridged structure while those with 2,6-dimethylphenyl or phenyl substituents adopt a distorted tetrahedral geometry with four nitrogen atoms of two anilido-imine ligands. The nickel complexes exhibited high activity up to 7.33 × 106 g/(mol of Ni · h) and palladium complexes showed very high activity up to 2.63 × 108 g/(mol of Pd · h) for norbornene polymerization with methylaluminoxane as cocatalyst. The nickel catalysts were attempted to polymerize ethylene at atmosphere pressure, however, only oligomers were produced.