title: Strength and reliability of surface treated Y-TZP dental ceramics.
abstract: This work was undertaken to evaluate the effects of dental grinding and sandblasting on the biaxial flexural strength and Weibull modulus of various Y-TZP ceramics containing 3 mol% yttria. In addition, the susceptibility of pristine and mechanically treated materials to low-temperature degradation under the conditions adopted for testing the chemical solubility of dental ceramics was investigated. The results revealed that surface grinding and sandblasting exhibit a counteracting effect on the strength of Y-TZP ceramics. Dental grinding lowered the mean strength and Weibull modulus, whereas sandblasting provided a powerful method for strengthening, but at the expense of somewhat lower reliability. The finest-grained material exhibited the highest strength after sintering, but it was less damage tolerant than tougher, coarse-grained materials. Upon extraction with the acetic acid solution and the ammonia solution, a significant amount of tetragonal zirconia had transformed to monoclinic, but extensive microcracking and attendant strength degradation had not yet occurred. Standard grade Y-TZP ceramics are more resistant in an alkaline than in an acidic environment, and there was a strong grain-size dependence of the diffusion-controlled transformation. Since a special Y-TZP grade containing a small amount of alumina exhibited the highest damage tolerance and superior stability in an acidic environment, this material shows considerable promise for dental applications.
authors.affiliation: Ceramics Department, Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia. tomaz.kosmac@ijs.si
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kosmac
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Oblak
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jevnikar
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Funduk
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Marion
mesh_terms: D002516:Ceramics; D003764:Dental Materials; D013499:Surface Properties; D015019:Yttrium; D015040:Zirconium
chemical_list: D003764:Dental Materials; D015019:Yttrium; D015040:Zirconium; C028541:zirconium oxide; C091417:yttria