In vitro investigation of fracture load and aging resistance of high-speed sintered monolithic tooth-borne zirconia crowns

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the fit, fracture load and aging resistance of the monolithic zirconia tooth-borne crowns with conventional and high-speed sintering.

Methods: The Y-TZP block was machined and sintered with conventional and high-speed sintering furnace. The marginal and internal gap between the crown and abutment was measured using a microscope and a fit checking material. A total of 28 crowns were further divided into an undegraded and a degraded group. An accelerated aging test was carried out on the degraded group. The crown was cemented and a fracture resistance was tested. X-ray diffraction was used to evaluate the crystalline structure. The data were analyzed with Student's t-test, and a one-way ANOVA and Tukey's multiple comparison test.

Results: There was no significant difference in mean marginal gap between the two groups. The mean internal gap was significantly greater in the speed sintering than in the conventional sintering (P <0.001). The mean fracture load of the conventional sintering crowns was not significantly different from that of speed sintering crowns after aging. The occurrence of monoclinic crystals of degraded crown was significantly higher than that of undegraded crown both in the conventional (P <0.001) and speed-sintering group (P <0.001).

Conclusions: It was concluded that the monolithic zirconia crowns produced by high-speed sintering showed no significant difference in the marginal gap and the fracture load after aging compared to conventional sintering. Therefore, the high-speed sintering seems a valid method of producing tooth-borne monolithic zirconia crowns.