Purpose: To evaluate the tensile and shear bond strengths of eight adhesives and two amalgams (spherical and lathe cut).
Materials and methods: Two high-copper amalgams (Tytin, spherical; and ANA-2000, dispersed phase) and seven adhesives (Panavia EX, C&B Metabond, Chameleon Metal Resin Cement, All-Bond 2, All-Bond C&B, Photo-Bond and Imperva Dual) were evaluated. An epoxy resin (Stycast 1266) was included as a control for comparison because it was an adhesive material of similar viscosity but different chemistry from the dental adhesives. The aluminum surfaces were sandblasted with 50 microns aluminum oxide just prior to coating with adhesive resins. The testing area was defined with a 4 mm circular adhesive Mylar mask. All adhesives were mixed and handled according to manufacturers' instructions. Freshly mixed amalgam was condensed into the test cavity and onto the surface immediately after coating with adhesive. After 24 hours storage, the bond strengths were determined in an Instron testing machine at a crosshead speed of 2 mm/minute. The debonded surfaces were examined in an optical microscope for site of failure. The few samples which showed failure at the aluminum-resin interface were not included in the study. Selected debonded surfaces were examined by SEM. A 2-way ANOVA (General Levin Models-GLM) was used to analyze the data from both the tensile and shear bond strength tests. GLM was used instead of standard ANOVA because of the unbalanced design. The lack of balance occurred because some of the bonding resin/amalgam groups had different sample numbers.
Results: A wide variation in bond strengths was obtained with adhesive resin cements and not all appeared suitable for adhesive amalgam restorations. Panavia EX, C&B Metabond, Chameleon Metal Resin Cement and All-Bond C&B showed the best potential for amalgam bonding, with shear and tensile bond strengths greater than 8 MPa. Viscous, filled versions of adhesives appeared to be more effective. Choice of amalgam appeared to be less important than choice of adhesive.