Influência das ponteiras luminosas de aparelhos fotopolimerizadores sobre a irradiância e emissão espectral

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of the light curing tips of light curing units on irradiance and spectral emission. Photopolymerization is widely used in contemporary dentistry. Different dental materials based on composite resin have photoiniciators in their formulations. These materials depend, totally or partially, of the light activation for their maximum polymerization. In the group of resin-based dental materials are composite resins, adhesive systems, resin cements, and hybrid glass ionomer cements. The quality of photopolymerization can be influenced by material composition, substrate characteristics, operatory techniques, and lightcuring devices characteristics. In this literature review, scientific articles described in Portuguese and English languages, and published between 2004 and 2020 years, were included. The light tip can influence on the irradiance, considering the following variables: distance, physical barriers, angle, access for light tip in the mouth, and surface integrity of the light tip. The light emitted on light tip surface can be not uniform along for all its surface area, mainly in polywave LEDs. It could lead to different irradiances and wave-length emitted in different points of the light tip surface. In addition, operatory technique factors adopted during the light-curing of resin-based materials can play positively or negatively on the photopolymerization quality. Finally, the photopolymerization is influenced by different factors, including the characteristics of the light emitted from light-curing units, the absorption properties of the photoiniciators in resin-based materials, and the operatory technique used for photopolymerization.