Particleboard

Particleboard is an engineered wood panel manufactured by compressing small wood particles, chips and shavings, often byproducts of sawmilling and other wood processing, with a synthetic resin binder under heat and pressure into a flat sheet. Developed in the mid-twentieth century as a way to use wood industry waste economically, it is generally weaker and less moisture-resistant than plywood or oriented strand board, so its architectural use is concentrated in non-structural applications such as underlayment, interior cabinetry substrate, countertop cores and flooring rather than load-bearing structural framing, where its low cost relative to solid wood or other engineered wood panels made it a standard interior building material through the later twentieth century.