The development of high impact strength denture-base materials

Abstract

In the present work novel reinforcing systems for poly(methylmethacrylate) have been developed based on low-molecular-weight (15–35 000) polybutadiene-based polymers with suitable reactive end-groups for grafting. A range of copolymers was prepared with varying amounts of the polybutadiene-based polymer as the bead component of a denture-base resin system. The actual polybutadiene content of the bead phase was also varied by blending the copolymer with ordinary poly(methylmethacrylate). Multifactorial experiments were carried out on a number of such systems, and evaluated with respect to impact strength, Young's modulus and viscoelastic properties. Denture-base materials have now been developed which have properties comparable to the best of existing proprietary materials. The advantage of using low-molecular-weight polybutadiene-based materials is that they can be added to methylmethacrylate monomer, without greatly affecting viscosity, and hence do not require modified techniques for polymerization.