Improvement of fatigue strength and fracture toughness of bone cement by incorporation of aromatic structures to formulations

It has been postulated that the incorporation of cyclic or aromatic groups to the chemical structure of monomers/polymers could improve the mechanical performance of the polymeric materials prepared from them. In this work, N-methacryloyloxyethyl-m-toluidine (MEET) monomer, a compound whose chemical structure is similar to diethylamino ethyl methacrylate (DEAEM) but having an aromatic ring, was synthesized. Acrylic bone cements were prepared using either MEET or DEAEM as co-monomer and a systematic study of the potential influence of adding aromatic structures on the fatigue properties and fracture toughness of such bone cements was performed. Results indicated that the formulations prepared with the aromatic co-monomer (MEET) exhibited a higher fatigue resistance than those containing the aliphatic counterpart (DEAEM), at all co-monomer concentrations. These results confirm the hypothesis that the inclusion of aromatic structures in the bone cement formulations increases the fatigue life of these materials. It was also found that presence of aromatic structures in bone cement formulations improve the fracture toughness of cements.