Sol–gel preparation and properties of interpenetrating, encapsulating and blend silica-based urea-formaldehyde hybrid composite materials

Four different silica-based urea-formaldehyde (UF/SiO2) composite materials were prepared by various sol–gel synthetic procedures to yield an interpenetrating (IPN-UF/SiO2), a micro-size UF resin encapsulated inside silica shell (Encap-UF/SiO2), a micro-size silica encapsulated inside UF shell (Encap-SiO2/UF), and a blend mixture (Blend-UF/SiO2) hybrid systems. The thermal properties of the obtained organic–inorganic hybrid composite materials were examined by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The structure and morphology of the obtained systems were investigated by infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. Their surface porosity and acidity were evaluated from the nitrogen adsorption isotherm and the pH of the corresponding 10% aqueous suspension, respectively. All the results provided evidence for the formation of different hybrid systems with different surface, structural and morphological characteristics.