Diverse property-spectrum of flavors of polyolefins: A data analysis study

It is known that synthesis and processing conditions drastically influence the morphology of a polymer resulting in many flavours of the same polymer displaying wide variations of a given property value. One such feature that leads to property variation for the same polymer is the molecular weight. Variations in molecular weight lead to many flavors of the homopolymer polyethylene with glass transition temperatures ranging from ~150-350 K for neat resins. In this regard, the numerical data of the empirically known flavors of polyolefins are examined for their property variations through a comprehensive data analysis. These polymers involve hundreds of flavors of polyethylene and polypropylene resins whose thermal, rheological, thermodynamic and mechanical properties are analyzed for understanding their property variations. In addition, statistical correlations between the properties are quantified by relating them to features such as density, molecular weight, and crystallinity. Such data analysis studies are useful (1) to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the sources of property value variations, and (2) improving existing machine learning models for property prediction by incorporating features in the fingerprint (i.e., representation of polymers) derived from key features known to affect properties.