Abstract
The wear of acrylic denture teeth is a serious problem that can change the vertical dimensions of dentures. This study evaluates the effect of adding salinized nano ZrO2 particles on the microstructure, hardness, and wear resistance of acrylic denture teeth. Heat polymerizing polymethyl methacrylate resin was mixed with salinized ZrO2 at concentrations of 5 wt.% and 10 wt.%. Acrylic resin specimens without filler addition were used as a control group. SEM/EDS analyses were performed and the Vickers’ hardness was evaluated. Two-body wear testing was performed using a chewing simulator with a human enamel antagonist. After subjecting the samples to 37,500 cycles, both height loss and weight loss were used to evaluate the wear behavior. The microstructural investigation of the reinforced-denture teeth indicates sound nanocomposite preparation using the applied regime without porosity or macro defects. The addition of zirconium oxide nanofillers to PMMA at both 5% and 10% increased the microhardness, with values of up to 49.7 HV. The wear mechanism in the acrylic base material without nanoparticle addition was found to be fatigue wear; a high density of microcracks were found. The addition of 5 wt.% ZrO2 improved the wear resistance. Increasing the nanoparticles to 10 wt.% ZrO2 further improved the wear resistance, with no microcracks found.
Highlights
Denture teeth are currently made of either methacrylate-based resins or porcelain, but acrylic teeth have nearly eliminated porcelain teeth from the market [1] due to a number of advantages, including their chemical bonding to the denture base [2,3], lower susceptibility to fracture [4,5] and decreased clicking [6,7]
Nano-fillers, such as metal oxides, carbon, and glass fibers have been used to improve the mechanical behavior of the acrylic resin denture base materials [11,12,13,14,15,16]
The stresses caused by the dispersion of ZrO2 NPs are transferred from the weak Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) matrix to the strong nanoparticles [20]
Summary
Denture teeth are currently made of either methacrylate-based resins (acrylic resin) or porcelain, but acrylic teeth have nearly eliminated porcelain teeth from the market [1] due to a number of advantages, including their chemical bonding to the denture base [2,3], lower susceptibility to fracture [4,5] and decreased clicking [6,7]. Acrylic resin tooth wear is a serious complication during denture service and can change the vertical dimension of dentures This process harms the denture and exerts an impact on facial aesthetics and the function of the masticatory muscles, resulting in less efficient mastication. Efforts were made to enhance the wear resistance of the acrylic resin denture teeth, such as the formation of cross-linked polymer teeth (interpenetrated polymer network) [8,9] Another possible solution is to add nanofillers to enhance mechanical properties. The overall aim of this study is to develop nanocomposite denture teeth with high wear resistance To this end, the effect of incorporating salinized nano-ZrO2 particles into acrylic resin on the acrylic denture tooth microstructure, hardness, and wear resistance was investigated
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