Catalyst affects the growth of polymer, but how does the amount of catalyst affects the polymer growth?
Dear Aditya,
generally speaking chain growth (molecular weight) and catalyst (or initiator) concentration are inverselly proportional. Regards
There is no definite answer like: proportion or reciprocal. Substrates, catalyst, initiator? Catalyst is not always needed.
Regards,
In most types of polymerization, the word "catalyst" has been replaced by the word "initiator". The exception is, e.g., coordination polymerization where we can talk about "Ziegler-Natta catalysts".
The growth of polymer occurs in both of the main methods of polymerization: chain-reaction polymerization & step-reaction polymerization.
As for chain-reaction polymerization, more amount of initiator will result in shorter polymeric chains (i.e. lower average molecular mass).
In step-reaction polymerizations, there is a different story. For these and case by case, you may use initiator (e.g. in grafting) or catalyst (e.g. in the production of PET by transesterification) but the advice of prominent scientists had been to use very little amount.
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