Abstract
Catalysis is the number one technology in chemical industry polymer industry and petroleum refining: 95 percent of all products (volume) are synthesized by means of catalysis. The advantages of catalytic processes are due to the mild reaction conditions, their cost efficiency, and their environmentally friendly character. In the field of polymerization one has frequently to use a precursor complex associated with a co-catalyst, whether one uses early or late transition metals, even main group elements, lanthanides or actinides. Sometimes with supported complexes the support plays the role of a co-catalyst. A predictive approach of catalysis is rapidly emerging due to the spectacular progresses made in Surface OrganoMetallic Chemistry (SOMC) leading to well defined Surface OrganoMetallic Fragments (SOMF).This area is based on the fact that one assumes a priori a mechanism in which the role(s) of the co catalyst (s) is(are) well identified. By this approach we have been able to design any SOMF responding to any catalytic reaction. The simplified strategy is depicted in figure 1. We will describe in this conference the various examples related to polymerization of olefins, Ziegler Natta de-polymerization of polyolefins, the ROMP of cyclic olefins, the polymerization of dienes, and the ROMP of Cyclic paraffin’s as well as the transformation of ethylene to propylene.