What is thermoplastic and thermosetting plastic?
Thermosetting materials and plastics are usually liquid or malleable prior to curing and designed to be molded into their final form, or used as adhesives Others are solids like that of the molding compound used in semiconductors and integrated circuits (IC’s). The curing process transforms the resin into a plastic or rubber by a cross-linking process. Energy and/or catalysts are added that cause the molecular chains to react at chemically active sites (unsaturated or epoxy sites, for example), linking into a rigid, 3-D structure. The cross-linking process forms a molecule with a larger molecular weight, resulting in a material with a higher melting point. During the reaction, the molecular weight has increased to a point so that the melting point is higher than the surrounding ambient temperature, the material forms into a solid material. Uncontrolled reheating of the material results in reaching the decomposition temperature before the melting point is obtained. Therefore, a thermose
