Today's KNOWLEDGE Share: The differences between thermoplastic and thermosetting plastics

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share:

What are the differences between thermoplastic and thermosetting plastics? 

The easy answer is that a thermoset plastic cannot be remolded after being cured, while a thermoplastic one can be reheated and remolded.

But why? 

As with many questions related to materials engineering, to answer that we have to zoom in a little bit and understand a bit more about chemistry at a molecular level. 

In a thermoplastic, strong bonds link monomers into polymer chains, however, these long monomers are joined to one another by weak bonds! These bonds can easily break apart when the plastic is heated and quickly reform again as it cools. 

Thermosetting plastics, on the other hand, have monomers that are cross-linked, thus, have extremely strong bonds! 

Polymer matrix composites can have either thermoplastic or thermoset matrices. 

Source:#managingcomposites

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