Silane treatment of filler and composite blending in a one-step procedure for dental restoratives

The aim of this study was to investigate whether a one-step procedure of silane treatment of filler and composite blending could also produce the strong resin-filler integrity, as can be obtained for dental composites in two steps by pretreating the filler with a silane coupling agent before blending. Resin mixtures containing either a silane-functional methacrylate or a non-silane-functional methacrylate were blended with silane pretreated or non-treated filler particles. The resin-filler integrity of the composites was determined from the wear performance in three-body wear tests. For composites with the non-silane-functional methacrylate the wear rates dramatically decreased when the silane pretreated filler was used instead of untreated filler, showing the efficacy of the silane treatment. For composites with the silane-functional methacrylate the decrease was small, indicating comparable resin-filler integrity for the one-step and the two-step procedures.