The Effect of Tapioca on Morphological and Mechanical Properties of Metakaolin–Zirconia Geopolymer for Dental Restorative Nanocomposite

Abstract

Composite is one of the direct dental restoration materials, which is con-sisted of three main components such as matrix, filler, and coupling agent. Metakaolin and zirconia are potential alternatives as dental resto-ration materials. This study aims to determine the characteristics of syn-thesized metakaolin–zirconia geopolymer nanocomposite with the addition of tapioca as a template. The study is a pure experimental laboratory in-vestigation. The sample is fabricated by means of both the synthesis of metakaolin, zirconia, alkali activator, chitosan and the addition of tapioca of 0.4% v/v, 0.8% v/v, and 1.6% v/v. Alkali solution consisting of NaOH and Na2SiO3 is used to activate the geopolymerization of me-takaolin. Nanocomposite characteristics with variations of the addition of tapioca template are then evaluated for its hardness and microstructure. Synthesis of metakaolin–zirconia geopolymer nanocomposite with the ad-dition of tapioca template is successful, and it has a mean hardness value, which has met the hardness value used for dental composite restoration and has the best attachment to artificial teeth. The best hardness value is of 51.70 VHN achieved by the addition of 1.6% v/v tapioca to geopoly-mer. The resulting SEM images of all samples show a mean particle size of 100 nm indicating that the size is suitable for dental restoration with the value of 5–100 nm.