Nanosilica and wood flour-modified urea–formaldehyde composites

Abstract
In this study, the thermal behavior of modified urea–formaldehyde (UF) resin with nanosilica (nano-SiO2), wood flour (WF), and their mixture of SiO2/WF was investigated. Five modified UF hybrid composite materials with 0.8 F/U ratio with different filler were synthesized using the same procedure. The thermal behavior of materials was studied using nonisothermal thermogravimetric analysis, differential thermal gravimetry (DTG), and differential thermal analysis and supported by data from infrared spectroscopy. The shift of DTG peaks to a high temperature indicates the increase in thermal stability of modified UF resin with hybrid SiO2/WF fillers, which is confirmed by the data obtained from the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic study. It was estimated that the UF/WF samples based on nano-SiO2 have better thermal stability.