RESUMO
Magnesium phosphate cement (MPC) is a suitable alternative for the currently used calcium phosphates, owing to beneficial properties like favorable resorption rate, fast hardening, and higher compressive strength. However, due to insufficient mechanical properties and high brittleness, further improvement is still expected. In this paper, we reported the preparation of a novel type of dual-setting cement based on MPC with poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (pHEMA). The aim of our study was to evaluate the effect of HEMA addition, especially its concentration and premix time, on the selected properties of the composite. Several beneficial effects were found: better formability, shortened setting time, and improvement of mechanical strengths. The developed cements were hardening in â¼16-21 min, consisted of well-crystallized phases and polymerized HEMA, had porosity between â¼2-11%, degraded slowly by â¼0.1-4%/18 days, their wettability was â¼20-30°, they showed compressive and bending strength between â¼45-73 and 13-20 MPa, respectively, and, finally, their Young's Modulus was close to â¼2.5-3.0 GPa. The results showed that the optimal cement composition is MPC+15%HEMA and 4 min of polymer premixing time. Overall, our research suggested that this developed cement may be used in various biomedical applications.