Influence of the artificial saliva storage on 3‐D surface texture characteristics of contemporary dental nanocomposites

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyse the influence of the artificial saliva on a three-dimensional (3-D) surface texture of contemporary dental composites. The representatives of four composites types were tested: nanofilled (Filtek Ultimate Body, FUB), nanohybrid (Filtek Z550, FZ550), microfilled (Gradia Direct, GD) and microhybrid (Filtek Z250, FZ250). The specimens were polymerised and polished by the multistep protocol (SuperSnap, Shofu). Their surface was examined, before and after 3 weeks' exposure to artificial saliva storage. The surface texture was analysed using the atomic force microscope (AFM). The obtained images were processed to calculate the areal autocorrelation function (AACF), anisotropy ratio S (texture aspect ratio), and structure function (SF). The log-log plots of SF were used to calculate fractal properties, such as fractal dimension D, and pseudo-topothesy K. The analysis showed changes in surface anisotropy ratio S values, which became higher, whereas the S roughness (root-mean-square) reduced after the artificial saliva storage. All the samples exhibited bifractal structure before the saliva treatment, but only half of them remained bifractal afterwards (GD, FZ250), whereas the other half turned into a monofractal (FUB, FZ550). The cube-count fractal dimension D was found to be material- and treatment-insensitive.

Micromorphology analysis of sputtered indium tin oxide fabricated with variable ambient combinations

“…Our previous studies demonstrated that the corner frequency is found similar to average decay length, and hence to average grain diameter [28,29]. As a quick characterization tool, fractal analysis proved to be useful in studies of morphology and mechanical properties of various surface structures upon heat treatment [30][31][32], nanomechanical processing [33,34], in contact with body tissues and fluids [35][36][37][38]. Obtained results established a bridge between specific geometry of residual surface and its tribological and physical characteristics [39][40][41].…”

The relation between structural, rugometric and fractal characteristics of hard dental tissues at micro and nano levels

“…Similar discrimination can be made considering the results of fractal analysis shown in Table . As a rule (Ţălu et al, ), the most outer tissues, that is, the enamel and cementum, are found bifractal, whereas the dentin—monofractal. Bifractal characteristics correspond to structures with interpenetrating spatial arrangements on different length scales, for example regular clusters, while monofractal ones correspond to structures exhibiting spatial patterns of the first order only.…”

Microstructure, micromorphology, and fractal geometry of hard dental tissues: Evaluation of atomic force microscopy images

“…Recently, applications of nanotechnology in dentistry have been reported in order to improve tooth properties (Salerno & Diaspro, ; Ţălu et al, ; Ţălu, Yadav, Lainović, et al, ; Uskoković & Bertassoni, ). Enamel, dentin, and cementum as the hard tissue along with dental pulp are the main parts of every natural tooth.…”