Influence of Surface Treatments on Surface Roughness, Phase Transformation, and Biaxial Flexural Strength of Y-TZP Ceramics

The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of surface grinding and sandblasting on surface roughness, phase chances, and biaxial flexural strength of yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia (Y-TZP) materials. Thirty disk specimens of Cercon (C), DentaCAD (DC), Zirkonzahn (ZZ) were fabricated. The specimens were divided into three groups according to surface treatment (control, ground, and sandblasted). Surface roughness was measured, and X-ray diffraction analysis was performed. Finally, biaxial flexural strength was determined. The data was analyzed by two-way ANOVA. Weibull statistics was used to analyze the variability of strength. The effects of surface treatments on surface roughness values were different for each material. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that control groups of C and ZZ were composed of tetragonal zirconia. Relative amount of monoclinic zirconia (SD) was 7.366 (0.716)% in the DC control group. In all materials, transformation occurred after treatments. Grinding decreased and sandblasting increased the strength of control groups in all materials.' Ground C and DC specimens had higher Weibull modulus than control groups while lower m was found for ground ZZ. Sandblasting, resulted in lower in compared with grinding for all materials although increased strength. The roughness and crystalline phase of Y-TZP materials were influenced by surface treatments. Biaxial flexural strength of materials decreased after grinding and increased after sandblasting. The low m of sandblasted groups may indicate further weakening of the materials, resulting in unexpected failures. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater 91B: 930-937, 2009