Glass-ceramics for dental restoration

The most important challenge in the development of materials for prosthodontics is to fulfill the needs of patients for biocompatible, durable, reliable, and esthetic dental restorations. No less important is to provide the professionals in a dental laboratory or a dentist's surgery with reliable materials that can be processed according to established workflows. Increasing standards on the patient’s side, e.g., esthetics or metal-free restorations, and the advancement of dental workflows, e.g., digitalization, are the main driving force for research and development in the field. Multifunctional properties of glass-ceramic materials and prospects of glass-ceramic engineering accommodates well with these versatile requirements. Therefore, glass-ceramics took an important role in restorative dentistry. The potential of engineering glass-ceramics for dental applications will be discussed using examples of research and product development conducted by Ivoclar Vivadent AG. The chemical composition of the base glass as well as controlled nucleation and crystallization are crucial topics in the engineering of glass-ceramics. For this reason, two commercialized bioinert materials (IPS e.max and IPS Empress) that are representatives for two fundamentally different nucleation and crystallization mechanisms will be presented. The application of bioactive materials in medicine and in dentistry is restricted to implant materials or coatings of implant materials as well as stimulus for the growth of natural bone during a bone augmentation treatment. Research on bioactive rhenanite glass-ceramics will be presented.