Preface

Polyolefin has grown to be one of the most fascinating areas in academic and industrial polymer science and is the most widely used polymers in plastics industries. In 2014, about 130 million tons of polyolefin were produced worldwide, the biggest part by Ziegler-Natta catalysts, others by Phillips and metallocene catalysts - or by a high pressure process. The controlled synthesis, detailed characterization, degradation and stabilization of polyolefin materials have changed the world. Containing only carbon and hydrogen atoms, polyolefin is a sustainable material, light in weight and with a wide variety of properties. The production requires only easily available and nontoxic monomers and optimized reaction engineering decreased the monomer and energy consumption. After the end of use, polyole fin can easily be recycled.

New generations of catalysts with higher activities and stereospecifities and modern production processes produce a great polyolefin variety ranging from high density polyethylene (HDPE), to linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE), high melting polypropylene, high modul polyolefin fibers, ethene-propene rubber (EPR), and ethene-propene-diene monomers rubber (EPDM). The chromium based Phillips catalysts opened the field of gas phase polymerization for HDPE. Newly supported Ziegler-Natta catalysts make it possible to increase the activity, to control the morphology, and for polypropylene to increase the isotacticity by adding different kinds of donors. Metallocene and other transition metal complexes activated by methylaluminoxane allow to predict accurately the properties of the resulting polyolefin by knowing the structure of the catalyst and to control molecular weight and distribution, comonomer content and tacticity by careful selection of the appropriate reactor conditions. The single site character of these catalysts leads to a better understanding of the mechanisms of the olefin polymerization.

The World Polyolefin Congress (WPOC) 2015 held in parallel with the Asian Polyolefin Workshop (APO2015) is a unique forum to gather scientists and students from academia and industry all over the world, which are involved in the different aspects of polyolefin research, development, production, and application. In oral and poster presentations the latest results will deal with kinetic and active site measurements, olefin homo-, living- and copolymerizations, polyolefin characterization, long chain branched polyolefin, cyclic and functional copolymers, nanocomposites, polyolefin reaction engineering, and stability and degradation.

I encourage all scientists, who are interested in some aspects of polyolefin research, to participate in the WPOC 2015. You can present your results, learn more about polyolefin at this first World Polyolefin Congress, will have fruitful discussions, meet or make friends, and will have a wonderful time in Tokyo.

Walter Kaminsky