TECHNIQUES

Engineering meets aesthetics

BY RAY SHARKEY, RDT

ince the early 50’s and 60’s, there

S has been persistence with the devel-

opment and adaptation of felspathic
porcelains. For each new generation of
ceramist, there has always been a new iter-
ation of the same ceramic material to
master. Different layering techniques, dif-
ferent material characteristics and of
course, a whole new series of names and
descriptions for basically the same things
- opalescence, luminescence, fluorescence
and any number of different adjectives to
describe the observations of the developer.
Often some of these different words are
merely a marketing ploy to have us
believe we must adopt this new process to
Figure 2. Many colours and modifiers have been added to achieve these aesthetic
stay up with the times and sell us another
crowns - 11 and 21.
kit of porcelain. With this in mind, we now
have yet another new process/category to The reverse engineering of natural tooth
consider, this time called “gradient engi- structures by the scientists at Heraeus
neered ceramics”. Kulzer made the discovery of the complex
To put it simply, this is the process of interaction between opalescence and fluo-
reverse engineering a tooth and using rescence - one coming from inside the
computers to develop a material to tooth in the dentine; the other interacting
closely match the optical properties of with visible light in the enamel (Figure 4).
natural teeth.
Is it just another marketing idea?
You decide!

Figure 3. In this case, only a little

Figure 1. Pure quartz being added to create
a unique hydro-thermic ceramic material
at the Heraeus Kulzer plant in Germany.
While companies have been developing
and modifying felspathic porcelains, there
has been a tendency to add more and more
bottles of special porcelains to help us obtain
particular effects in our ceramic crown.
However, when Heraeus Kulzer set out to
develop a new ceramic material, using the
Gradient Engineered Ceramic concept, the
34 - eLABORATE
cervical stain and a crack line have
been added to achieve this natural effect
using HeraCeram.
aim was to try to simplify the already over
complicated techniques available today. The
aim was to enable the ceramist to master the
material easily and not necessarily be a
master to use it. Simplicity is the key with
this material. Instead of spending hours
carefully putting tiny effects of translucency
and opacity in the body of our crowns and
adding areas of coloured translucency, blues
and whites trying to mimic natural opales-
cence, we can now let the ceramic do the
work for us (Figures 2 and 3).
Figure 4. An amazing dance of light as
seen when we view the interplay between
the ultraviolet and visible spectrum.
Of course this is nothing new. Many
pioneers in ceramic concepts observed
these complex dances of light and devel-
oped new materials and techniques to
copy them. The problem was that they
always had to adapt the materials readily
available, namely, felspathic porcelain.
This usually required the addition of new
minerals to the materials and sometimes
July/August 2005
made these newly modified materials dif-
ficult and unpredictable to handle.
Heraeus Kulzer had the unique advantage
when creating a new ceramic material that
they could use their vast experience as the
world’s largest manufacturer of pure
quartz glass (Figures 5 and 6).
Figures 5. Heraeus Quartz Glass is the
world’s largest manufacturer of high qual-
ity quartz fibre optics and telecommunica-
tion cable. Figure 6. A reflector created by
Heraeus Quartz Glass was placed during
man’s first visit to the moon in 1969. It
still continues to perform its function of
reflecting a laser beam for measurement
back to earth each day.
Using unique expertise perfected over
decades, they were able to computer
model materials to closely match the char-
acteristics of natural teeth. Then, with the
most sophisticated and cutting edge pro-
duction technology, create a frit of raw
ceramic correctly resembling nature with
its interaction with both visible and ultra-
violet light (Figure 7).
Figure 7. The Heraceram Frit
shown here giving wonderful natural
opalescence and fluorescence.
This leap forward in computer-aided frit
design has enabled the ceramic scientists
to approach the development of the actual
ceramic material with a clean slate. They
no longer had to try to modify an old tech-
nology, but design a completely different
material called Heraceram. So is it just
another ceramic material?
July/August 2005
Definitely not! At first glance, we are
presented with the standard; opaque, den-
tine and enamel, and the obligatory
shoulder and stain materials. It’s when we
use our tried and trusted layering tech-
niques, we can achieve a crown that looks
good and matches the shade guide. How-
ever if we look just outside the square and
think about the structure of natural teeth,
we can see that the different layers of den-
tine and enamel interact with each other in
varying degrees, by their layer thickness
(Figures 8 and 9).
Figure 10. These colours are a result
of opalescence rather than the actual
presence of orange or blue in the
enamel; however in the past, we have
tended to add these colours to our crown
in a sometimes vain attempt to recreate
natural effects. Most feldspathic porce-
lains do not duplicate this opalescence
naturally and must be modified to
achieve the same result. The base frit
Figure 8. If we apply this general princi- used to create the Heraceram enamel
ple and layer our ceramics in a similar displays opalescence without the
way an amazing transformation takes addition of any special additives.
place. Our acceptable crown suddenly
transforms into a natural looking tooth.
It is amazing how different a crown can
look by simply varying the layer thick-
ness of the dentine.
Figure 9. Varying layer thickness
of enamel.
Figure 11. The Heraceram crown on the
To better understand how we should
right displays exactly the same amount of
apply these layers, there are some funda-
opalescence as the natural tooth on the left.
mental things we need to understand
Giving it a complete life like appearance.
about tooth and light interaction, namely
opalescence and fluorescence.
Opalescence occurs mainly in the enamel The only thing remaining to do is
layer of a tooth and is the result of light refrac- decided on the degree of translucency
tion and reflection. It is influenced by the and the strength of this opalescence.
internal substructure of the enamel itself Even when we use the normal enamel
causing certain wavelengths to be reflected from the basic kit, we see opalescent
and others to be transmitted through the tooth. effects presented without any special
To properly understand how this takes place modification. Heraeus Kulzer also
is too complicated to explain in this short include a special kit called the matrix kit
article, however suffice it to say that when but I will explain more about how this is
light is presented to a tooth, most of the wave- used in the next instalment.
lengths of visible light at the blue end of the The other fundamental consideration
spectrum are reflected from the surface and we make when using Heraceram, or any
the other wavelengths are refracted, or bent, other ceramic, is Fluorescence. This is the
and transmitted through the tooth, into either manifestation of ultraviolet light on teeth
the dentine, or into the oral cavity. This effect subsequently causing the tooth to appear
causes us to see blue and orange hues in the brighter or darker, ultimately affecting the
incisal edges of teeth (Figures 10 and 11). tooth’s value (Figure 12).
eLABORATE - 35
TECHNIQUES

Figure 12. The samples above show

differing fluorescence depending on the
value. From left to right is A1 - A4.
When we consider a crown and how
ultraviolet light will react with our
ceramic, we should try to use a material
that will present some degree of fluores-
cence, and that fluorescence should only
be manifested in the same areas as it is in
natural teeth (Figure 13).
Figure 14.When we start out from the
opaque layer with a material that closely
matches natural fluorescence and we
have an enamel material which closely
matches natural opalescence, the only
other thing to consider is the dentine
structure. This is where Heraeus Kulzer’s
concept of gradient engineering really Figure 15. To reproduce natural tooth
comes into its own. If we look at the fluorescence, we should start with a fluo-
underlying layer of dentine in a tooth rescent opaque material, since the most
without the enamel, we would see a fluorescent part of the tooth is deep inside.
rough, uneven layer varying in opacity in
some areas, namely the mamelon Figure 16.
regions. If we layer the dentine material
of Heraceram in a similar way and allow
the thicker parts of the dentine to reflect
a little more light and the thicker areas
of enamel to have an influence on the
degree of opalescence, we can start to
see an interaction between these layers
and also a subtle influence on the value
caused by the underlying fluorescence in
the opaque.

many fancy effects of fluorescence, we

Figure 13. Natural teeth display varying
degrees of fluorescence, strongest from
the pulp.
We now know that ultraviolet light
causes fluorescence most strongly from
deep inside the tooth and so we start our
crown with Heraceram opaque, an opaque
material that displays a similar fluores-
cence. We can also control the amount of
fluorescence in other areas of the tooth by
various other materials also included in
the matrix kit and again, I will cover these
in more detail next time. Heraeus Kulzer
set out to design a material that should be
easy to use - if we don’t want to do too
36 - eLABORATE
just leave the natural influence of the fluo-
rescent opaque material to compensate the
tooth’s natural fluorescence (Figure 14).
All this adds up to us being able to
simply vary the layers of dentine and
enamel and allow the ceramic to do the
work for us, by imitating the natural inter-
action with light (Figure 16).
Next time we will explore how special
materials in the Heraceram Matrix kit
allow us to control many of the more
subtle influences we see in teeth when we
want to go the extra mile and create a truly
spectacular ceramic imitation of nature.
Heraceram is available from Heraeus
Kulzer Australia. For further information,
contact Jeff Lauretti on (02) 9417-8411
or 0432-327-848.
Ray Sharkey has owned his own
laboratory on Queensland’s sunshine
coast since 1985 and has lectured on
various aspects of dental technology since
1992. In 1994, he was hand picked by
famous Swiss ceramist Willi Geller to be
the first Australian member of the
Oral Design® group. Recently he has
taught hands on technique courses in
China, Korea and New Zealand for Her-
aeus Kulzer on Heraceram.
July/August 2005