Zirconia dental implants degradation by confocal Raman microspectroscopy: analytical simulation and experiments

Subsurface hydrothermal degradation of yttria stabilized tetragonal zirconia polycrystals (3Y-TZP) is presented. Evaluation of low temperature degradation (LTD) phase transformation induced by aging in 3Y-TZP is experimentally studied by Raman confocal microspectroscopy. A non-linear distribution of monoclinic volume fraction is determined in depth by using different pinhole sizes. A theoretical simulation is proposed based on the convolution of the excitation intensity profile and the Beer-Lambert law (optical properties of zirconia) to compare between experiment and theory. The calculated theoretical degradation curves matche closely to the experimental ones. Surface transformation (V-0) and transformation factor in depth (T) are obtained by comparing simulation and experience for each sample with nondestructive optical sectioning. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America