Ziegler-Natta Catalyst

A Ziegler-Natta catalyst, named for its developers Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta, is a catalyst used to synthesize polymers from alpha-olefins such as propylene. Heterogeneous versions, based on titanium compounds combined with an organoaluminum cocatalyst such as triethylaluminium, dominate industrial use, while homogeneous versions built from complexes of titanium, zirconium or hafnium are typically activated with methylaluminoxane. Ziegler discovered the titanium-based catalysts and Natta showed they could produce stereoregular polymers from propylene, work recognized with the 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; commercial production began in 1956, and by 2010 Ziegler-Natta and related catalysts were producing more than 100 million tonnes a year of plastics, elastomers and rubbers, the largest-volume commodity chemicals and plastics in the world.