Keynote Address: The Dark Side of Light Curing: Implications for Modern Resin Composite Technology

Body: For over three decades, visible light curing technology has provided dental practitioners with spatial and temporal control of the polymerization reaction of dental resin-based materials. Although this technology represents a milestone development in dental history, its importance for optimal curing of restorative materials is often overlooked, both by dentists and manufacturers. There have been numerous developments in terms of light source, wavelength and power, which has ultimately increased irradiance from ~300mW/cm2 since the introduction of quartz-tungsten halogen sources to over 3000mW/cm2 for some modern LED units. The general assumption being to reduce cure time without affecting material properties. This presentation will review the recent literature on the potential effects of high irradiance curing, its inverse reciprocity with curing time, the current standards of light curing and how technology may help to improve those standards.