Due to their excellent aesthetics and ease of manipulation, dental resin composites are the popular choice over amalgam fillings for dentists and patients to treat damaged defects and improve oral health. Nonetheless, a new study by a group of researchers from China and Germany noted that despite advancements in dental resin composites, issues such as bulk fracture and recurrent caries continue to hinder their performance and durability.
Graphene oxide (GO) is considered a highly promising reinforcing filler due to its excellent mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and abundant surface functional groups. However, its natural dark brown appearance can significantly impair the aesthetics of dental restorative materials.
To address this contradiction, the study’s multidisciplinary team of scientists found that wrapping GO onto the surface of TiO2 is useful to tune the colour appearance and optical property of GO.
They published their findings in Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing.
“As the weight ratio of GO to TiO2 in the microemulsion gradually increased from 0.005 to 0.1, the colour appearance of GOx@TiO2 changed from bright grey to dark grey,” study lead A/Prof Ruili Wang, at Donghua University, said.
“Furthermore, the optimal 1 wt% GO0.005@TiO2 was selected to construct the bimodal filler formulation with micro-sized barium glass powder (BGP).”
Notably, these hybrid inorganic fillers made dental composites achieve better light transmittance, higher flexural strength, without affecting cell activity in vitro.
“This is a new approach in the field of dentistry,” A/Prof Wang said.
“We hope that our results encourage scientists to continue investigating the use of novel inorganic fillers in combination with multimodal filler systems to make high-strength dental composites and other related biomaterials.”
