Study of the dental zirconium implant surface in a nano-scale using an atomic-force microscope

The influence of various surface treatments of zirconium implants on the adhesion strength in the connection “individual milled transdental implant - cement - hard tooth tissues” was investigated. As analogs of such implants, we used pins made of zirconium dioxide, individually made for prepared previously extracted teeth, in combination with the most effective Fuji-1 and Multilink-N cements. To assess the quality of the formed "cleanliness" of the surface, the experiments were carried out in two stages. At the first stage, the samples were processed by a sandblasting machine under a pressure of 2 atmospheres by aluminum oxide powder with a grain size of 50, 100 and 250 μm. The treatment was carried out once in one direction, longitudinally to the axis of the implant. At the second stage, the same samples were processed again in the same mode, but in two directions. The processed samples were studied in a probe nanolaboratory (Troitsk, Russia) using an atomic force microscope (AFM). Roughness parameters were measured in nanometers on each sample from three images of a scanning probe microscope (SPM). Analysis of the SPM images revealed that the roughness of the samples is higher when processed with larger grains. The results of the study showed that a single sandblasting by zirconium dioxide is quite enough to improve the adhesive properties of the implants both to the fixing cements and to the patient's bone tissue.