Onium salt improves the polymerization kinetics in an experimental dental adhesive resin

Abstract The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of an onium salt in the polymerization kinetics of a dental adhesive model resin. A monomer mixture, based on Bis-GMA, TEGDMA and HEMA, was used as a model dental adhesive resin, which was polymerized using camphorquinone (CQ) as a photo-initiator in addition to either binary or ternary photo-initiator systems. The binary systems were formulated with different concentrations of diphenyliodonium hexafluorphosphate or ethyl 4-dimethylaminobenzoate in relation to the monomer and 1 mol% of CQ. The ternary system was a blend of 1 mol% of CQ, 2 mol% of ethyl 4-dimethylamino benzoate and 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2 or 4 mol% of onium salt. Real time Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy was used to investigate the polymerization reaction over the photo-activation time. When CQ was used as photo-initiator, a slow polymerization reaction was observed and a lower monomer conversion. The addition of a second component (onium salt or amine) increases the polymerization rate and conversion independent on the co-initiator concentration. Ternary photo-initiator system showed an improvement on the polymerization rate of the dental adhesive model resin leading to high conversion in short photo-activation time. Also, a mechanism for initiating polymerization using an amine or onium salt as a co-initiator component is proposed.