Polyethylene: Polymer with Future

Polyethylenes play a very important role today, because these polymers have a lot of advantages in comparison to other materials. They are produced using easily accessible, reasonable raw materials, they are environmentally harmless, and they can be recycled or energetically exploited after loss of performance. However, the most important aspect is, that they can be tailored in an excellent way using well established modern, energy saving, and non-polluting technologies of large scale.To make these products and to run these processes appropriate catalysts mostly together with cocatalysts are required. The catalyst or the catalyst/cocatalyst system plays the key role for catalytic polymerization of olefins. Now, a broad spectrum of high mileage catalyst systems is available and some new ones are under development. New catalyst systems open prospectives for future progress. The catalyst system and the polymerization process are forming the polymerization technology and both parts must be well-balanced to reach a high level of effectiveness.Besides the polymerization technology, the correlations between polymer structure and polymer properties must be known to tailor products. Based on these three legs: catalyst or catalyst system, process, polymer properties/polymer structure relations, polyethylenes with new and so far unknown properties can be designed and brought to the market. With these polymers consumers needs can be better met saving material and energy for processing, transportation and finally, waste management.