Dentine bonding agents--characteristic bond strength as a function of dentine depth.

The tensile bond strength to dentine of four dentine bonding agents has been measured at various depths within dentine and the results analysed using Weibull analysis. There were significant differences in the bond strength values among the four products particularly with near-surface dentine. Despite the differences in chemical composition among the materials the trend of decreasing bond strength with increasing depth of dentine was common to them all. This suggests that the underlying mechanism of adhesion may be common to all four products despite their differing chemical compositions.