Application of Raman Spectroscopy for Dental Enamel Surface Characterization

Abstract

Dental enamel is the most complex and highly mineralized human body tissue, containing more than 95% of carbonated hydroxyapatite and less than 1% of organic matter. Current diagnostic methods for enamel caries detection are unable to detect incipient caries lesions. Many papers determine the re-mineralizing effect using many fluorinated compounds and different demineralizing solutions to test physical characterizations such as microhardness, roughness, wettability, among others, but there is not much information about the use of Raman Spectroscopy. Raman Spectroscopy is an efficient technique of chemical characterization to identify functional groups (phosphate-hydroxyl groups) found in the hydroxyapatite formula, which helps identify the level of mineralization on dental enamel surface. Raman spectroscopy is applicable to any state of aggregation of the material, indicated for biological samples. Given the minimum bandwidth of a laser source, as with all spectroscopic techniques that use a laser source, a small sample is sufficient, which makes it an important technique in the analysis of reactive products with very low yield. Raman spectroscopy can be used to obtain the main functional groups in order to determine the remineralization of dental enamel; these results are highly valuable as they can help us make the best decisions on dental treatments.