Scientists embed GO-wrapped TiO2 in dental restorative composites for dental caries treatment

Dental caries is a major public health problem worldwide, brining a substantial medical and economic burden to society. Due to their excellent aesthetics and ease of manipulation, dental resin composites are the popular choice over amalgam fillings for dentists and patients to treat damaged defects and improve oral health. Nonetheless, in a new study published in the ScienceDirect journal Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, a group of researchers from China and Germany noted that despite advancements in dental resin composites, issues such as bulk fracture and recurrent caries continue to hinder their performance and durability.

Graphene oxide (GO) is considered a highly promising reinforcing filler due to its excellent mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and abundant surface functional groups. However, its natural dark brown appearance can significantly impair the aesthetics of dental restorative materials. To address this contradiction, the study's multidisciplinary team of scientists found that wrapping GO onto the surface of TiO₂ is useful to tune the color appearance and optical property of GO.

"As the weight ratio of GO to TiO₂ in the microemulsion gradually increased from 0.005 to 0.1, the color appearance of GOx@TiO₂ changed from bright grey to dark grey," shares Ruili Wang, the investigator who led the study. "Furthermore, the optimal 1 wt% GO_0.005@TiO2 was selected to construct the bimodal filler formulation with micro-sized barium glass powder (BGP)."

Notably, these hybrid inorganic fillers made dental composites achieve better light transmittance, higher flexural strength, without affecting cell activity in vitro.

"This is a new approach in the field of dentistry," adds Wang. "We hope that our results encourage scientists to continue investigating the use of novel inorganic fillers in combination with multimodal filler systems to make high-strength dental composites and other related biomaterials."

Contact author details:

Ruili Wang, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai, China, wangruili@dhu.edu.cn

Funder:

This research was funded under the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2023YFB3809903/2023YFB3809900) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52572297).

Conflict of interest: 

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

See the article: 

Wang, R., et al., Electrostatic self-assembly of graphene oxide on TiO2 particles and their applications in dental restorative composites, Advanced Nanocomposites, Volume 2, 2025, Pages 331-340, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adna.2025.10.003.