In vitro lifetime assessment of zirconia dental ceramics
WEI C. 1, LI S. 2, GREMILLARD L. 3
1 Northwestern Polytechnical University, XI'AN, China; 2 Fourth Military Medical University, XI'AN, China; 3 INSA-Lyon, Villeurbanne, France
The in vitro lifetime assessment of dental zirconia has been the focus of researchers. This work mainly studied the cyclic fatigue lifetime in saliva and aging lifetime of three commercial zirconia dental materials: two kinds of 3 mol%-yttria stabilized zirconia ST(super-translucence) and MT(medium-translucence), in which MT contains a small amount of alumina; a 5 mol%-yttria stabilized zirconia TT(tooth-translucency). ST and MT materials have higher initial mechanical strength (flexural strength) and initial crack propagation threshold than TT materials, thus they have longer cycle fatigue lifetime, but TT has best aging resistance(no aging) in existing aging procedures. MT has a higher initial mechanical strength and better aging resistance than ST samples due to the influence of alumina at grain boundary, but has lower strength reliability. Finally, some guidance for the use of dental zirconia ceramics are provided by comparing the phase structure of two groups of zirconia restorations served after in-vivo use.