Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene for high-demanding applications: synthesis upscaling and advances in processing and composites

This thesis is based on a collection of papers and patents published and filed between 2010 and 2017 and added as appendixes 1 to 16. The objective of the work was to study the influence of certain reaction parameters to achieve a profitable industrial scale production of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene UHMWPE with reduced number of entanglements, aiming to establish the: most cost-effective chemicals to use for highest amount of product per batch with a targeted product morphology to achieve best processability in continuous solid state processing (chapter 3); targeted molecular weight of the product to achieve desired performances in the commercial article (chapter 4); addition of functionalities to improve product synthesis and processability as well as to increase performances and renovate manufacturing of new articles (chapter 5). [Continues.]