Does reinforcing dental restorative materials enhance their performance?

Highlights

• The review article discusses the effect of reinforcements in the parent dental restorative materials that results in enhanced performance in real-time situations.It includes the details of the properties of different reinforced dental composite material. (DCM)s, such as mechanical strength, thermal properties, physical/chemical properties, tribological performance.
• The review revealed that nanofiller particles enhance the properties of various dental composite materials. The hybrid dental composites also contribute significantly in increasing the mechanical and tribological properties. A silane-treated filler improved the dental composite bonding strength.

Dental Composite Fabrication Method

1. Prepare mixture of monomer and diluents in appropriate proportions
2. Add initiator and accelerator/co-initiator in appropriate amount to the resinous mixture
3. Select filler that are either fiber or ceramic (treated or not treated) and mix properly with matrix
4. Select mold and fill the dental composite material; use light curing unit for curing.

Findings

1. Bis-GMA is the probable dental resin material that is widely used for dental applications along with TEGDMA, which acts as a diluent, CQ, which acts as the photoinitiator, and EDMAB or DMAEMA, which act as the accelerator, in the polymerization of the resin.
2. The reinforcement of fibers or particulates significantly lead to the enrichment of physical, mechanical, thermal, and tribological properties of the dental resin matrix.
3. The silane surface treatment method of particulate fillers with g-MPS further resulted in the improvement of interfacial bonding between the resin matrix and particulate filler; consequently, the overall performance of the dental composite material was improved.
4. The size (micro/nano), shape (spherical/whisker etc.), and proportion of dental resin and reinforcement resulted in significant enhancement of overall performance; however, their content is required to be ascertained for optimized performance, subjectively and quantitatively (using design of experiment/ multi-criteria decision making techniques) via experimentation.