Counter anion binding in the phenoxyimine, salan and metallocene olefin polymerization catalysts activated with perfluorophenylborate

Abstract Ion pair separation is a process that may influence the activity of homogeneous catalysts of olefin polymerization. We have studied the energy of separation for selected titanium and zirconium metallocene and post-metallocene catalytic ion pairs by means of DFT, dispersion-corrected DFT and Paired Interacting Orbitals method (PIO). Unusually weak cation–anion interactions in the bis(phenoxyimine) systems were attributed to strong electron-donating properties of the phenoxyimine ligands. Energy decomposition analysis (EDA) revealed that almost 70% of the counter ion binding energy results from electrostatic interactions. The PIO method made it possible to analyze the nature of the c…