Technology Overview

This technology relates to the field of preparation of zirconia dental crown coping, which is used for making ceramic zirconia crowns. In the market, ceramic zirconia crowns are very expensive. This is because zirconia ceramic is very difficult to be milled due to the hardness of zirconia, which measures 8-8.5 on the Mohs scale (this figure is close to the hardness of diamond, i.e. 10 on the Mohs scale).

This technology provides a low-cost proprietary electrophoretic deposition (EPD) method for manufacturing ceramic zirconia crowns using digital fabrication process instead of the conventional manual process. The EPD system consists of an anode and a cathode. Zirconia will be deposited on the anode forming the inner shape of the crown defined by dental software and 3D printing technology. The deposited green body will be hardened and becomes the zirconia ceramic coping after sintering.

Technology Features, Specifications and Advantages

Proprietary electrophoretic deposition method of manufacturing ceramic zirconia crown consists of :

• Proprietary method of preparation of the customised anode for the deposition of the zirconia
• Proprietary formulation of the EPD suspension composition
• Proprietary control of voltage, time and separation distance for the EPD process
• Proprietary sintering profile for the deposited zirconia coping

CAD/CAM and other digital fabrication process are used to improve the accuracy, efficiency and reliability of the manufacturing process

The appearance, hardness and other properties of the crown coping made by this process is comparable to that made by traditional method with low cost and shorter time.

Potential Applications

There is a high demand for dental restorations in Singapore due to the increasing aging population. Currently, a lot of elderly have missing teeth. Missing teeth can cause diet restriction, low self-esteem, withdrawn social behaviour, etc. The crown is an important dental restoring method for the elderly. It is easy to replace the old crown with a new one later when the gum has shrunk through time and when the underneath of the crown has decayed.

Zirconia crown is the most expensive and aesthetic type of dental crown. Zirconia is a man-made diamond. Zirconia crowns are thus very strong and able to withstand strong biting forces even in back teeth. The material is also translucent, and this makes the crowns more natural looking. This is suitable for the front teeth, where it is important to have crowns look as close as possible to the patient’s original teeth.

This technology can be applied in the dental lab industry to improve the dental restoration.

Customer Benefit

• The equipment cost for the EDP is low, this will reduce the investment and adoption cost.
• The process requires minimal manual operations so reduce the manpower and operation cost
• With reduction of capital cost and operation cost, it will reduce production cost of ceramic zirconia crown making cheaper for adoption of zirconia crown.