Facts

Contact person:
Camilla Johansson
Responsible at MaU:
Camilla Johansson
Project members at MaU:
Time frame:
01 May 2020 - 06 June 2025
Faculty/department:
Research subject:

About the project

Yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) ceramic materials are used for dental restorations to restore damaged teeth. In recent years, new generations of the material, with different compositions and crystal structures, have been developed. Accordingly, the new materials have other properties, such as an increased translucency, but a significantly lower flexural strength and fracture toughness. These materials are used in patient treatments despite limited data.

During the manufacturing of dental restorations, the material is exposed to various processing factors, such as sintering, coloring, and glazing in the dental laboratory. In the clinic, grinding and polishing is performed to adjust contacts. These processing factors can considerably affect the material properties and consequently the performance and durability of the final restoration.

However, the new generations of zirconia are often handled the same way as the first generation, even though the properties differ, which can compromise the patient treatment and reduce the quality of life for the patient. Accordingly, it is essential for the dental community to have knowledge about how the processing factors affect the materials’ properties in order to choose suitable laboratory and clinical procedures and thus provide predictable treatments. The aim of the project is to evaluate how laboratory and clinical-related processing factors affect the material properties of high translucent zirconia materials.