Incorporation of Hydroxyapatite-Silica Nano-Powder for Enhancement of Glass Ionomer Cement (GIC)
Hydroxyapatite is a naturally occurring mineral form of calcium. These days, nanohydroxyapatite has been used as filler in some of dental biomaterials to improve its properties. Improvements in their compressive strength, diametral tensile strength , flexural strength , toughness, bonding and fluoride-release properties have been reported after the addition of HA into the material. In particular, a few studies have been conducted in School of Dental Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) to improve the hardness ofCGIC . In this case, nano-hydroxyapatite-silica (HA-SiO2) was synthesized by one pot technique and incorporated into commercially available CGIC Fuji IX GP (GC International, Japan). It was found that the addition of nano-HA-silica into CGIC (HA-SiO2-GIC) increased the hardness of CGIC by 73% compared to the use of conventional GIC alone. It is believed that the nano silica particles fill the voids between the hexagonal HA particles, and subsequentl...