Wear evaluation of MZ100 compared to ceramic CAD/CAM materials

The material and antagonist wear of two CAD/CAM ceramic materials, the laboratory-processed IPS Empress ceramic, and the composite mill block material MZ100 were tested in an artificial wear simulator with human enamel as the antagonistic material. The material samples underwent 50,000 test cycles (1 cycle per second, 50 N) in distilled water. The wear of the material samples and of the opposing enamel was documented after 30,000 and 50,000 cycles with replicas, digitized, and evaluated with a 3D evaluation system. The loss of volume and height caused by wear was calculated. No significant difference between the ceramic materials could be found either in the amount of material or in the amount of antagonist wear. The material wear of MZ100 differed significantly from Vita Mark II only in terms of volume loss. Regarding height loss, MZ100 exhibited a significantly higher wear than all ceramic materials. The wear of the enamel antagonists does not differ significantly between the ceramic materials. With MZ100, however, a significantly smaller amount of enamel wear was found when compared with Empress and Vita Mark II. Despite the highest material wear, MZ100 had the lowest material wear rate, the lowest enamel wear rate, and the lowest total wear rate. The laboratory-processed IPS Empress material had a clearly higher material wear rate than the CAD/CAM materials.