30 Sep Biomimetic Dentistry: The Perfect Artificial Tooth?
The staff at Prescott Dentistry utilize biomimetic approaches when repairing and restoring teeth. If you are unfamiliar with biomimetic dentistry as explained in our previous blog articles, biomimetic dentistry can be understood as using materials that resemble nature and are bio-compatible to bond teeth to repair them to their original state in both strength and feel. “Bio” meaning nature, and “mimetic” meaning “to imitate”. These advanced techniques that allow microscopic layers of bonding material to repair teeth are indeed cutting edge, but something even more advanced may be on the horizon.
To explain why it is so difficult to find a suitable tooth replacement that rivals the composition and resilience of a natural tooth you have to understand what teeth are made of. When viewing a tooth at the microscopic level, you see countless layers upon layers of micro-plates that are perfectly aligned and fused together. Until now, producing a similar material with similar complexity had been seemingly impossible.
Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have come up with a new method that imitates the tooth’s natural model nearly identically. Through an advanced process that involves a plaster cast that is poured over with magnetize ceramic micro-plates, solidification, and directed magnetic fields. Through this process, multiple layers with diverse material properties can be created in a single object mimicking the tooth’s layers.
This material and process are still in the proof-of-concept stages, but these advancements show how biomimetic dentistry is at the cutting edge of emerging dental science. Contact Prescott Dentistry today to learn about biomimetic dentistry and what techniques are available today to repair your teeth back to their former glory!
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (9/29/2015) Wendy (Flickr)