The technology of improving the optical property for the zirconia dental ceramic

All-ceramic restorations have become a trend in the development of dentistry for their excellent biocompatibility and superior optical properties. Adequate translucency plays an important role in optimal esthetics of the all-ceramic restorations. However, zirconia-containing core materials which have been proved to possess the excellent mechanical property may not be suitable for esthetics requirement because of the poor translucency. In our experiments, it has been proposed that the translucency of zirconia core materials can be improved by the control of the primary particle size and the sintering protocol to obtain the nearly full densification. The results of our study have showed that yttrium stabilized tetragonal zirconia (Y-TZP) core materials from the primary nanoparticles can obtain the nearly theoretical density and higher transmittance according to the optimized sintering protocol.