A Novel Approach for Characterisation of Adhesive Toothbiomaterial Interfaces by ATM.

Abstract The ability to adhere biomaterials to tooth tissue has drastically changed today's dental restorative practice. Modern adhesive techniques enable dentists to restrict operative procedures to the sole removal of diseased tooth tissue without further destruction of the remaining sound tissue. However, adhesive restorations have only a short lifetime of ca. 5 years. Extending the restoration lifetime is therefore one of the primary goals of present research in dental materials science. In practical relevance and direct benefit to that objective are studies that contribute to a better understanding of the interfacial phenomena that take place between restorative material and tooth tissue. Therefore, the resolution of instruments available to elucidate this interfacial interaction is essential. Besides the transmission electron microscope (TEM), a more recent powerful tool to study tooth-biomaterial interaction with high resolution is the atomic force microscope (AFM).