Additive Manufacturing of Dental Prosthesis Based on 3Y-ZrO2

Abstract

Tetragonal polycrystalline zirconia doped with 3 mol.% yttria (3Y-ZrO2) has become one of the most popular dental ceramics. Thanks to its outstanding mechanical properties (including high hardness, toughness and wear resistance), biocompatibility and white color, it is now commonly employed to produce components such as crowns, implants, abutments, bridges or posts and cores. In the case of dental implants, currently procedure of elaboration of zirconia dental prosthesis entails the waste of a huge amount of material and since involves milling the shapes, has very few options to personalize the product, that is why it needs manual finishing operations. In order to solve that,the additive manufacturing which is a suitable and new technology which leads to develop complex and accurate shapes can be adapted. To mature that technology is needed to meet some requirements. Those conditions involve testing the 3D printed specimens under working like service conditions which includes an ageing process in some samples. In this Bachelor’s degree project, a dual approach employing ball-on-three-ball assay as well as monotonic and cyclic Hertzian contact fatigue on 3D printed 3Y-ZrO2 specimens are explored. Furthermore, the microstructure and the damage induced during these mechanical tests are characterized by means of advanced characterization techniques (i.e. laser scanning confocal microscopy, Raman analysis, scanning electronic microscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis). The results of this Bachelor’s project may serve as a furtherstep in the journey of 3Y-ZrO2-based ceramic materials to become a reference material for 3D printed materials for dental prosthesis applications.