Surface Morphology and Tooth Adhesion of a Novel Nanostructured Dental Restorative Composite

Recently, a novel dental restorative composite based on nanostructured micro-fillers of anodic porous alumina has been proposed. While its bulk properties are promising thanks to decreased aging and drug delivery capabilities, its surface properties are still unknown. Here we investigated the surface morphology and the adhesion to tooth dentin of this composite as prepared. For comparison, we used two commercial composites: Tetric EVO Flow (Ivoclar) and Enamel HRi Plus (Micerium). The surface morphology was characterized by atomic force microscopy and the adhesion strength by tensile tests. The experimental composite is rougher than the commercial composites, with root mean square roughness of ~549 nm against 170-511 nm, and presents an adhesion strength of ~15 MPa against 19-21 MPa. These results show at the same time some proximity to the commercial composites, but also the need for optimization of the experimental material formulation.