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FDLA Focus Magazine: The Story of Dental Zirconia

What is ZIRCONIA?

Zirconia is a crystalline ceramic made from the mineral zircon. Crystalline means that it is not a glass, like dental porcelain, but closer to metals with grains and grain boundaries. We will discuss the implications of this below. Ceramic means that the material is a combination of metal with, in this case, oxygen. When metals combine with elements like oxygen, the result is a new material having its own set of properties (chemical, physical, biological, etc.). Just as the metal aluminum combines with oxygen to form the ceramic zirconia.