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Treatment of Ziegler-Natta (ZN) catalysts with BCl3 improves their activity by increasing the number of active sites. Here we show how 47/49Ti solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy enables us to understand the electronic structure of the Ti surface sites present in such treated ZN pre-catalysts, prior to activation with alkyl aluminum. High-field (21.1 T) and low-temperature (∼100 K) NMR augmented by DFT modeling on the pre-catalyst and corresponding molecular analogues enables the detection of 47/49Ti NMR signatures and a molecular level understanding of the electronic structure of Ti surface sites. The associated Ti surface sites exhibit 49Ti NMR signatures (δiso, exp = -170 ppm; CQ, exp = 9.3 MHz; κ = 0.05) corresponding to well-defined fully chlorinated hexacoordinated Ti sites adsorbed on a distorted surface of the MgCl2 support, formed upon post-treatment with BCl3 and removal of the alkoxo ligands, paralleling the increased polymerization activity.
Yakimov et al. (Wed,) studied this question.