Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the friction mechanism of dental restorative materials and their influencing factors.
METHODS: Using “dental materials, ceramics, friction properties, wear resistance, influencing factor, friction mechanism” in Chinese and “dental materials, ceramics, friction performance, wear, factors, friction mechanism” in English as the key words, a computer search was performed in Pubmed database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed) and VIP database (http://www.cqvip.com/) between January 1993 and October 2009 for articles about the friction properties of dental restorative materials; repeated study, review or Meta analysis were excluded. Totally 21 articles mainly focus on the friction mechanism of dental restorative materials and its influencing factors.
RESULTS: The ideal dental restorative materials should have similar with but slightly lower friction properties than natural teeth. As the complexity of chewing process and the diversity of dental restorative materials, the wear resistance of dental materials is affected by many factors, therefore dental ceramic materials, dental metal materials and dental resin materials were investigated to understand the wear properties of natural teeth, dental ceramics materials, dental metal materials, dental resin materials, to select matched dental restorative materials and to prevent excessive wear of natural teeth.
CONCLUSION: An understanding of friction and wear properties of dental restorative materials such as dental ceramic materials, dental metal materials, and dental resin materials, can not only help doctors choose the matching restorative materials according to the individual conditions of patients, achieve the optimal repair results, but also help to develop a more rational, more durable dental restorative material.