Dentin bonding system. Part I: Literature review

Currently, clinicians face choices of restorations including amalgams (mercury-based, gallium-based alloys, or mercury-free silver-based substitutes), composite resins, ceramics, and gold alloy. In order to choose an appropriate restorative material, many parameters are involved; they include preparation time requirements, finishing and polishing, marginal integrity, anatomy and contours, chipping and fracture, sensitivity, microleakage, wear resistance, and corrosion resistance. It is generally believed that amalgams are still evaluated as the best of all restorative materials as far as the aforementioned parameters are concerned. It is claimed that the amalgams exhibit in the range of 10 to 25 service years, while the composite resin exhibits ranging between 7 and 11 service years. When a composite resin requires a mass large enough for indirect fabrication, a bonding system is demanded with which this restoration should form an instantaneous, impervious, and stable bond to the tooth structure. Roughly a quarter century has passed since the research and development of a promising dentin bonding system was initiated. We are now in the fifth generation of the dentin bonding system, during the research and development of which various types of bonding agents as well as bonding models have been introduced. In this article, the history of development of the bonding agents and the understanding of the bonding mechanism will be reviewed.