Objectives: The aim of this study was to develop a one piece zirconia dental implant and a titanium implant with the same design in order to analyze the flexural strength after thermal-mechanical cycling.
Methods: A cylinder of Zirconium with 3 molecules of Yttrium (3mol% Y2O3-ZrO2) was developed and machined to obtain 15mm length and 4.7mm diameter implants. Grade 4 titanium cylinders were also machined with the same measures of zirconium and then were separated into groups (N=10). Group-Zr: Zirconia implants without thermal-mechanical cycling, Group-Ti: Titanium implants without thermic-mechanical cycling, Group-ZrM: Zirconia implants without thermal cycling, Group-TiM: Titanium implants without thermic-mechanical cycling, Group ZrTM: Zirconia implants with thermal-mechanical cycling and Group TiTM: Titanium implants with thermal-mechanical cycling. The thermo-mechanical test was performed with temperatures of 2 to 55°C and chewing force of 133 N with 2x106 cycles.
Results: All groupsshowed different behaviour, Zr (54.7±7.1), Ti (167.5±6.8),ZrM (42.1±5.1),TiM (171.6±7.1),ZrTM(55±7.6) and TiTM (167.5±7.4), values in MPa. Statistical analysis showed significant difference only for Zr and ZrM. There were no comparison between materials, only treatments were analized.
Conclusions: Thermal-mechanical cycling had no significant influence over titanium, only zirconia was affected under fatigue testing condition. New studies are being conducted to improve this material, but the zirconium appears to be a viable material for dental implants, so far. (Funding Agency FAPESP number 2010/12072-8)