Tensile bond strength to and SEM evaluation of ground and intact enamel surfaces

The aim of this study was to evaluate the bonding of four commercially available adhesive systems to ground and intact enamel surfaces.

Extracted human teeth were used to measure the microtensile bond strength to enamel and a field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) was used to observe the bonded interface and the effect of the surface conditioning of each material. Intact buccal enamel surfaces were cleansed with tooth paste using a rotary dental brush, and the ground enamel surfaces were prepared by reducing approximately 0.5 mm from the buccal enamel surfaces using a high-speed diamond bur. One-Step (OS, Bisco), Single Bond (SB, 3M), Clearfil Liner Bond II (LBII, Kuraray), and Tokuso Mac Bond II (MBII, Tokuso) were evaluated for their ability to bond to enamel.

There was no significant difference in bond strengths between the materials when they were applied to ground enamel surfaces (p > 0.05). However, the bond strengths of the self-etching systems, LBII and MBII, had significantly lower bond strengths to intact enamel than the bonding systems OS and SB using phosphoric acid etching (p < 0.05). FE-SEM revealed that the etching pattern of self-etching primers was not deep enough to obtain good penetration of bonding resin when applied to intact enamel surfaces.

Phosphoric acid etching produced good resin adhesion to ground and intact enamel. The self-etching/self-priming systems also produced good adhesion to ground enamel, but had lower bond strengths to intact enamel.