No description available.

The major goals of this thesis were to: (1) create a site-isolated aminosilica material with higher amine loadings than previously reported isolation methods, (2) use spectroscopic, reactivity, and catalytic (olefin polymerization precatalysts) probes to determine isolation of amine groups on these organic/inorganic hybrid materials, (3) synthesize an organic/inorganic hybrid material capable of activating Group 4 olefin polymerization precatalysts, and (4) synthesize a high amine loaded organic/inorganic hybrid material capable of reversibly capturing CO2 in a simulated flue gas stream. The underlying motivation of this research involved the synthesis and design of novel amine and sulfonic acid materials. Traditional routes to synthesize aminosilicas have led to the formation of a high loading of multiple types of amine sites on the silica surface. Part of this research involved the creation of a new aminosilica material via a protection/deprotection method designed to prevent multiple sites, while maintaining a relatively high loading. As a characterization technique, fluorescence spectroscopy of pyrene-based fluorophores loaded on traditional aminosilicas and site-isolated aminosilicas was used to probe the degree of site-isolation obtained with these methods. Also, this protection/deprotection method was compared to other reported isolation techniques with heterogeneous Group 4 constrained-geometry inspired catalysts (CGCs). It was determined that the degree of separation of the amine sites could be controlled with protection/deprotection methods. Furthermore, an increase in the reactivity of the amines and the catalytic activity of CGCs built off of the amines was determined for aminosilicas synthesized by a protection/deprotection method. The second part of this work involved developing organic/inorganic hybrid materials as heterogeneous Brønsted acidic cocatalysts for activation of olefin polymerization precatalysts. This was the first reported organic/inorganic hybrid sulfonic acid functionalized silica material capable of activating metallocenes for the polymerization of ethylene when small amounts of an alkylaluminum was added. Lastly, an organic/inorganic hybrid hyperbranched aminosilica material capable of capturing carbon dioxide from flue gas streams was synthesized. This material was determined to capture CO2 with capacities higher than currently reported aminosilica adsorbents.