Surface Micromorphology and Crystalline Structures of Hard Dental Tissue Treated by Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jet
In this paper, the results of helium plasma jet treatment of hard tissues of natural human teeth including enamel, dentin, and cementum are presented. Changes in surface morphology and structural properties have been investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in connection with multiscale image analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD) with the aid of the Rietveld method and Williamson-Hall plots, energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) and Raman spectra analysis. Despite initial differences in scaling behaviors of the surfaces of freshly extracted tissues, spatial characteristics of their plasma-treated counterparts appeared similar taking into account the fractal measures. On the other hand, despite improvement in crystalline structure of enamel due to the plasma treatments, the structure of cementum has been found intact.