Additive manufacturing of monolithic zirconia for dental restorations

The current production of tooth restorations in zirconia involves classic CAD/CAM milling of pre-sintered zirconia blocks, which wastes substantial material, introduces machining defects and limits the potential for individual (aesthetic) characterization unless a zirconia core is veneered with porcelain; during clinical functioning, the latter bi-layered structure unfortunately results too often in chipping defects. Additive manufacturing, i.e. 3D-printing and formerly 'rapid prototyping', enables to produce complex 3D-objects directly from a digital model, while addressing an optimized use of material and possibility for mass customization. The layer-wise assembling of components from CAD data exclusively allows a one-step fabrication of monolithic restorations with a gradient translucency/colouration as that of a natural tooth. Along with the benefit that monolithic restorations solve the clinical issue of porcelain chipping, we therefore aim to explore the capability of ceramic stereolithography to produce dental zirconia restorations that combine excellent mechanical properties and hydrothermal aging resistance with great individual characterization potential and a high geometrical precision in terms of marginal/internal fit to the tooth preparation.

Keywords:dentam restorations

Disciplines:Biomaterials engineering, Biological system engineering, Biomechanical engineering, Other (bio)medical engineering, Environmental engineering and biotechnology, Industrial biotechnology, Other biotechnology, bio-engineering and biosystem engineering