Melamine Formaldehyde (Melamine)

Melamine formaldehyde is a thermosetting plastic (or thermoset) that strengthens as it is heated during its preparation. Once set, it cannot be remolded or set to form a different shape. Melamine formaldehyde plastics retain their strength and shape, unlike other types of thermoplastics that soften with heat and harden when cooled (such as acetate, acrylic and nylon)
MF resins are quite similar to urea-formaldehyde (UF) resins and are fully compatible with them. The resin blend is called melamine-urea-formaldehyde (MUF).
Melamine can also be converted to foam structures with a distinctive pore structure, which is extremely hard. It can be used as an insulating and soundproofing material

Melamine formaldehyde (MF) resins are primarily made up of melamine and formaldehyde with formaldehyde acting as the cross-linker. The melamine reacts with formaldehyde under slightly alkaline conditions to form mixtures of various methylolmelamines:
Further heating causes condensation of the methylolmelamines :
The monomeric form hexamethylolmelamine and the MF resins are very versatile crosslinking agents for a wide variety of polymeric materials both water and solventborne.
To improve the solubility in solvents, melamine formaldehyde (MF) resins, and the monomeric forms are often etherified with alcohols such as methanol and butanol.
After acidification, they readily react with thiol, hydroxyl, carboxyl and amide groups to form three-dimensional thermoset polymer networks. The relative reaction rate for these functional groups follows the order of -SH >-OH > -CONH2 > -C00H