Polymethacrylate-based dental composites have received widespread clinical acceptance as alternative restorative materials to dental amalgam amid concern regarding the potential health risks associated with mercury release. However, the current dental composite restorations suffer from much reduced longevity mainly due to interfacial failures of dental adhesives to the surrounding tooth structures. This study is to evaluate plasma treatment effects on dentin surfaces for improving self-etching adhesive and dentin interface bonding and therefore for potential clinical applications. Extracted unerupted human third molars were used after removal of the crowns to expose the dentin surface. One half of dentin surface was treated with a non-thermal argon plasma brush, whilst another half was covered and used as untreated same tooth control. OptiBond All-In-One adhesive and Filtek Z250 dental composite were applied to the dentin surfaces as directed.  Adhesive-dentin bonding strength was evaluated by micro-tensile bond strength (mTBS) test. Bonding strength data was analyzed using histograms and Welch’s t-test based on unequal variances. The experimental results showed that plasma-treated specimens gave 22% increase in adhesive-dentin bonding strength than that of untreated controls. To study the interface stability, mTBS test was performed with four plasma-treated teeth that were stored in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) at 37 <sup>o</sup>C for 2 months. The test results showed that, after 2 months PBS immersion, the adhesive-dentin bonding strengths of the plasma-treated specimens decreased 9.4%, which is much less than the 14.3% decrease observed with the untreated same tooth control specimens. The experimental results from this study demonstrate that non-thermal argon plasma treatment was very effective in improving adhesive/dentin interface bonding strength, which is crucial for increasing longevity of dental composite restorations.   This study was supported in part by US National Institute of Health (NIH) with grant numbers of 5R44DE019041 and 1R01DE021431.<br/>

Plasma treatment of dentin surfaces for improving dental composite restoration bonding

249th National Meeting (2015)

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