A COMPARISON OF FRACTURE STRENGTHS OF PORCELAIN-FUSED-TO-TITANIUM CROWN AMONG TITANIUM SURFACE COATING TREATMENTS

Statement of problem: Titanium and its alloy, with their excellent bio-compatibility and above average resistance to corrosion, have been widely used in the field of dentistry. However, the excessive oxidization of titanium which occurs during the process of firing on porcelain makes the bonding of titanium and porcelain more difficult than that of the conventional metal-porcelain bonding. To solve this problem related to titanium-porcelain bonding, several methods which modify the surfaces, coat the surfaces of titanium with various pure metals and ceramics, to enable the porcelain adhesive by limiting the diffusion of oxygen and forming the adhesive oxides surfaces, have been investigated. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to know whether the titanium-porcelain bonding strength could be enhanced by treating the titanium surface with gold and TiN followed by fabrication of clinically applicable porcelain-fused-to-titanium crown Material and method: The porcelain-fused-to-titanium crown was fabricated after sandblasting the surface of the casting titanium coping with $Al_2O_3$ and treating the surface with gold and TiN coating followed by condensation and firing of ultra-low fusing porcelain. To compare with porcelain-fused-to-titanium crowns, porcelain-fused-to-gold crowns were fabricated and used as control groups. The bonding strengths of porcelain-fused-to-gold crowns and porcelain-fused-totitanium crowns were set for comparison when the porcelain was fractured on purpose to get the experimental value of fracture strength. Then, the surface were examined by SEM and each fracturing pattern were compared with each other Result:Those results are as follows. 1. The highest value of fracture strength of porcelain-fused-to-titanium crowns was in the order of group with gold coating, group with TiN coating, group with $Al_2O_3$ sandblasting. No statistically significant difference was found among the three (P>.05). 2. The porcelain-fused-to-gold crowns showed the highest value in bonding strength. The bonding strength of crowns porcelain-fused-to-titanium crowns of rest groups showed bonding strength reaching only 85%-94% of that of PFG, though simple comparision seemed unacceptable due to the difference in materials used. 3. The fracturing patterns between metal and porcelain showed mixed type of failure behavior including cohesive failure and adhesive failure as a similar patterns by examination with the naked eye and SEM. But porcelain-fused-to-gold crowns showed high incidence of adhesive failure and porcelain-fused-to-titanium crowns showed high incidence of cohesive failure. Conclusion: Above results proved that when fabricating porcelain-fused-to-titanium crowns, treating casting titanium surface with gold or TiN was able to enhance the bonding strength between titanium and porcelain. Mean value of masticatory force was found to showed clinically acceptable values in porcelain bonding strength in all three groups. However, more experimental studies and evaluations should be done in order to get better porcelain bonding strength and various surface coating methods that can be applied on titanium surface with ease.

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