Innovations in bonding to zirconia based ceramics: Part III. Phosphate monomer resin cements

Purpose: To compare the bond strength values and the ranking order of three phosphate monomer containing resin cements using microtensile (μTBS) and microshear (μSBS) bond strength tests. Materials and methods: Zirconia discs (Procera Zirconia) were bonded to resin composite discs (Filtek Z250) using three different cements (Panavia F 2.0, RelyX UniCem, and Multilink). Two bond strength tests were used to determine zirconia resin bond strength; microtensile bond strength test (μTBS) and microshear bond strength test (μSBS). Ten specimens were tested for each group (n = 10). Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the data (α = 0.05). Results: There were statistical significant differences in bond strength values and in the ranking order obtained using the two test methods. μTBS reported significant differences in bond strength values, whereas μSBS failed to detect such effect. Both Multilink and Panavia demonstrated basically cohesive failure in the resin cement while RelyX UniCem demonstrated interfacial failure. Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, the data obtained using either μTBS or μSBS could not be directly compared. μTBS was more sensitive to material differences compared to μSBS which failed to detect such differences. © 2010 Academy of Dental Materials.