In dentistry, ceramics represents one of the major materials used for the restoration of decayed, damaged, or missing teeth. The word “Ceramic” is derived from the Greek word “keramos”, which means “burnt stuff”. In 1789, a French dentist named deChemant and a French pharmacist named Duchateau collaboratively developed the first porcelain tooth material. Charles H Land first introduced ceramics to dentistry in 1889 when he patented the all-porcelain crown. Porcelain-fused-to-metal crown was developed by Dr Abraham Weinstein. These materials have crystalline structures with periodic regular atom arrangements and have ionic or covalent bonding. Ceramics are incredibly brittle despite being very strong and will catastrophically fail even with slight flexure. Thus, these materials are strong in compression but weak in tension. This paper describes the methods of strengthening ceramics.
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