Forty years of industrial developments in the field of isotactic polyolefins

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Abstract
The interest for the stereospecific polymerization of olefins discovered by prof. Natta in 1954 was so high that only a few years elapsed between the discovery and the commercialization of polypropylene. The polypropylene discovery generated a tremendous scientific and technological effort for the development of the catalyst, the process, the products. The fundamental achievements in the polypropylene technology had a significant impact over the polyolefin technology in general. Thanks to it, polyolefinic polymers, copolymers and rubbers, polyefinic based materials and alloys via heterogeneous Ziegler‐Natta catalyst polymerization are today largerly the most important family of plastic materials.The ability to vary melt flow and the broad properties range of these materials, the excellent thermal and physical‐mechanical properties of isotactic polyolefins together with the favorable economics and their full and easy recyclability widen the concept of monomaterial application fuelling their dynamic expansion since the early sixties.