Analysis of the characteristics of a green dental filling material made from a Zinc Oxide NPs, chitosan NPs and glass ionomer mixture

Abstract

<title>Abstract</title> Glass ionomer cements (GIC) is a common material in dental applications. GIC have some disadvantage such as secondary caries and low bioactivity. Many efforts have been proposed to modify the antibacterial features of GICs to prevent the secondary caries. In this work, the antibacterial activity of three types of NPs (biogenic ZnO NPs, Chitosan NPs and GIC) as well as their nanocomposites (Chitosan/ZnO, Chitosan/GICC and Chitosan/GIC/ZnO) were investigated. The synthesized nanocomposite was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). The antibacterial activity of the synthesized nanocomposites was investigated against two gram positive ( <italic>Bacillus</italic> and <italic>Staphelococas</italic> ) and two gram negative ( <italic>E. coli</italic> and <italic>Klebsiella pneumonia</italic> ) bacterial strains using agar diffusion disk. The obtained results revealed that the produced nanocomposites have a glassy structure with different particle size distribution. A comparable antibacterial action was observed in the three nanocomposites compared to the positive control Gentamycin. Biogenic ZnO NPs/Chitosan nanocomposite showed the largest antibacterial activity followed by GIC/biogenic ZnO NPs/Chitosan nanocomposite against the four bacterial strains, which make it a promising candidate for dental filling applications.