A Study on the Wear Behaviour of Monolithic Mullite Materials for Dental Applications

Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate the potential use of the monolithic mullite samples for the dental applications. For this purpose, at first the monolithic mullite samples obtained by the powder metallurgy method have been characterized by the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) together with the EDS analysis. The pin-on-disk tribometer has been used to conduct the wear test in order to determine the volumetric loss. After the wear tests, the worn surfaces of the sintered mullite samples have been studied. The presence of the 3Al2O3.2SiO2 structure has been confirmed by the FT-IR spectroscopy through the observation of the characteristic Al-O-Si linkages at the spectra. The wear rate results derived from the volumetric losses have been measured to be around 2.42×10-6 mm3/Nm. This value has been found to be lower than those of alumina and alumina-mullite composites in the previous studies, which explains the higher wear resistance of these mullite materials. The room temperature friction coefficients of AS-1 and AS-2 samples have been determined to be 0.88 and 0.80, respectively. The wear behaviour of the samples has been correlated to the sintering temperature and the resultant relative density of the samples. The mullite samples obtained in this study have indicated better wear performance than the other materials (alumina and alumina-mullite composites) in spite of the usage of monolithic material. Therefore, this study suggests that the monolithic mullite materials have a potential to be exploited for the replacement of the previous ceramic-based dental materials. Further studies might contribute to the improvement of these materials to be utilized in the oral environment.