Interfacial interactions of bioadhesive materials with human hard tissues

Recently, in dental practice, tooth reconstruction can be performed using dental adhesive technology following either a “glass-ionomer”, an “etch-and-rinse” or a “self-etch” approach. Glass-ionomer cements are well-known to possess an auto-adhesive capability without requiring any surface pre-treatment. The fundamental bonding mechanism of resin-based materials to enamel and dentin is essentially based on an exchange process, in which minerals removed from the dental hard tissues are replaced by resin monomers. These resin monomers, upon polymerization become micro-mechanically interlocked in the created porosities. Besides micro-mechanical interlocking through hybridization, an additional chemical interaction between functional monomers/polymers and tooth substrate components has been found to be important. In this review, we focus on how the chemical interaction of the biomaterial-hard tissue interface can improve bond durability, especially using chemical analytical techniques