Abstract
Dental amalgam has been used for more than a hundred years as a restorative material in dentistry due to its adequate mechanical properties, low cost and ease of application. Unfortunately, the release of toxic materials such as mercury and its compounds in the oral cavity has raised a great concern towards the use of dental amalgam in recent years. In this study the corrosion behavior of high copper dental amalgam was investigated in biological artificial saliva solution. The effects of addition of hydrogen peroxide, a reactive oxygen species, simulating an inflammatory condition, and addition of albumin, a protein found in biological environment were simulated. The corrosion behavior was studied by potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. It was found that the corrosion rate of dental amalgam decreased by half in the presence of hydrogen peroxide and albumin. Potentiodynamic polarization experiments showed that hydrogen peroxide served as an anodic inhibitor as indicated by the shift of corrosion potential towards more positive values and the corrosion current density towards lower values. Albumin was found to serve as an organic inhibitor as indicated by the shift of the corrosion current density towards lower values, while maintaining the corrosion potential at similar values.