Srinivasa Raju Datla¹, Rama Krishna Alla^2,, Venkata Ramaraju Alluri¹, Jithendra Babu P¹, Anusha Konakanchi³

Over the last decade, it has been observed that there is an increasing interest in the ceramic materials in dentistry. Esthetically these materials are preferred alternatives to the traditional materials in order to meet the patients’ demands for improved esthetics. Dental ceramics are usually composed of nonmetallic, inorganic structures primarily containing compounds of oxygen with one or more metallic or semi-metallic elements. Ceramics are used for making crowns, bridges, artificial denture teeth, and implants. The use of conservative ceramic inlay preparations, veneering porcelains is increasing, along with all-ceramic complete crown preparations. The earlier ceramics are very fragile and can not with stand the high tensile forces. Several modifications have been made in ceramics in order to address this quandary. This article is a review of dental ceramics; divided into two parts such as part I and II. Part I reviews the composition, structure and properties of dental ceramics from the literature available in PUBMED and other sources from the past 50 years. Part II reviews the developments in evolution of all ceramic systems over the last decade and considers the state of the art in several extended materials and material properties.

all-ceramics, sintering, feldspar, silica, glass, firing, slip casting, zirconia, CAD-CAM