Investigation of adding fluoroapatite nanoparticles on compressive strength and corrosion behaviour of dental amalgams

In recent years, there have been many efforts to improve biological and biocompatibility features of amalgam. The aim of this research was investigating the effect of adding fluoroapatite (FA) nanoparticles on compressive strength and corrosion behaviour of dental amalgam. An amalgam alloy powder was mixed with 1, 3 and 5 wt.% of FA nanoparticles to form composite powders. Compressive strength of the corresponding dental amalgam samples was measured on the first and seventh day after preparation and the corrosion behaviour was investigated by potentiodynamic polarization electrochemical test in 0.9 wt.% salt solution (physiologic serum). The results showed that the amalgam containing 1 wt.% FA nanoparticles has higher compressive strength then the pure amalgam and with increasing the FA content in amalgam to 3 and 5 wt.%, the compressive strength decreases. The results also indicated that the corrosion behaviour of the amalgam sample with 1 wt.% FA is similar to the corrosion behaviour of the original amalgam, while with increasing the weight percentage of fluorapatite, the corrosion resistance decreases. The results of this research showed that adding FA nanoparticles in amounts of up to 1 wt.% to amalgam alloy improve compressive strength, has no destructive effect on corrosion behaviour of the material and can increase its biocompatibility and biological activity.