Introduction: Titanium and its alloys are most widely used and gold standard material for dental implants. But osseointegration of titanium to jaw bones requires longer duration of time periods (3-6 months). In the recent past, various surface treatments have been employed to improve/fasten the rate of osseointegration. But optimization of surface treatment is necessary for the commercialization of dental implants. In the present study, the effect of various parameters of sand blasting i.e. pressure, duration of blasting and acid etching on the change in thread profile ,topography and Ra values are studied.
Materials and Methods: Titanium dental implants with specific micro and macro thread geometries are machined on 10 axis CNC machine Deco 13e at IIT Delhi. Sandblasting is done on these implants at different pressure for different time durations on a specifically designed blasting chamber. Acid etching is done to remove the blasted media as well as to create submicron topography on these sandblasted implants. Topography of machined, sand blasted and sand blasted and acid etched implant surfaces are examined under SEM. Micro and macro thread profile is examined under vision measurement microscope and Ra value is also measured under optical profilometer.
Results: With the increase in pressure of sand blasting, the Ra value increases but there is drastic change in the profile of micro and macro thread geometry. However by increasing the time duration of sandblasting, there is increase in Ra value but profile of micro and macro threads is comparatively less affected. After the acid etching process, there is slight decrease in Ra value along with the desired sub-micron level topography (Figure 1) without affecting thread geometry.
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Discussion: Implant design and surface morphology are two important factors for the success of dental implants. So in the present study, effect of various process parameters are studied to preserve the thread geometry as well as desired topography and Ra value. With the increase in pressure and time of blasting, Ra value increases but pressure is having more drastic effect thread geometry as compared to time so the 4.0 bar pressure for a duration of 20 seconds with mesh size 80 are identified as the optimal parameters for processing. After acid etching there is slight decrease in Ra value because, peeks obtained after sand blasting are reduced due to acid etching process and simultaneously there are numerous small peeks also visible due to generation of submicron topography by acid etching.
Conclusion: Processing parameters of sand blasting and acid etching are optimized to obtain the desired Ra value without much change in the profile of micro and macro thread geometry along with the desired sub micron topography.
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)