Relative fracture toughness and hardness of new dental ceramics.

Dental ceramics can fail through growth of microscopic surface flaws that form during processing or from surface impact during service. New restorative dental ceramic materials have been developed to improve resistance to crack propagation. Eleven of these improved materials with the common feature of a considerable amount of crystalline phase in the glassy matrix were evaluated. The ceramic materials studied included fluormica-, leucite-, alumina-, and zirconia-reinforced glasses. The relative hardness and fracture toughness were determined by indentation technique. Alumina-reinforced materials resulted in the highest fracture toughness values, whereas the fluormica- and leucite-reinfoced materials showed more moderate but statistically significant greater values compared with those of control materials. The hardness values of ceramic materials with improved fracture toughness were both substantially higher or lower than those of the control groups and suggested a lack of direct correlation between these two properties. Selection of appropriate restorative materials depends on clinical application and requires consideration of several physical properties including fracture toughness.