Curing behavior and structural property of an inorganic compound added urea-formaldehyde(UF) and urea-melamine-formaldehyde(UMF) were studied. In addition, tensile strength and formaldehyde emission of plywoods made of those resin binders were studied. Curing temperature and structure were not changed, but tensile strengths of plywoods manufactured both with a UF resin and a UMF resin were decreased slightly as increased amount of inorganic compound. Formaldehyde emissions from plywoods were reduced as increased amount of inorganic compound. Wheat flour as an extender was helped to reduce of formaldehyde emission. From the result of this study it might be estimated that using appropriate amount of inorganic compound and proper resin system can be strengthened bond strength and reduced formaldehyde emission.

The influence of adding urea to phenol-formaldehyde (PF) resins as a co-polymer component were investigated aiming at synthesizing useful phenol-urea-formaldehyde resins. Urea was added at 10% by total resin weight. Several methods for the addition of urea to the PF resins during synthesizing resins to see the co-polymerization occurs between urea and PF resins. The urea was added at the beginning, at three different middle stages, and at the end of PF resin synthesis. The copolymerized methylene bridges between phenol and urea molecules were not observed by 13C-NMR; no signal around 50ppm. The curing of urea-modified PF resins, evaluated by dynamic mechanical analysis(DMA), showed some differences among the resins. DMA gel times ranged from 2.75 min to 3.25 min and the resins made with earlier urea additions showed slightly shorter gel times. The longest cure time and gelation time was observed for the resin PFU. Catalyst effects on the DMA cure time values of resins were not significant with different amounts of catalyst or different types of catalyst for all resins tested. Gel times of urea-modified PF resins shortened the most by triacetin catalyst