Early childhood caries is now affecting the children in dangerous proportions. There is a widespread loss of the tooth material irrespective of the type of the carious lesion. Restoration of such lesions with a strong permanent bond between the dental tissues and the restorative dental materials would be a highly desirable requisite of any restorative material. Ultramorphological characterizations show that the interfa-cial morphology and the chemical characterization of the bonding systems appear to be strongly associated with each other and, therefore, observing and understanding the interfacial phenomenon and its quality would be of great importance in the selection of a dental adhesive for its use in pediatric restorative dentistry.
Keywords: Dye penetration; Interexaminer variability; Interfacial morphology; Microleakage; Self-etch system.; Total-etch system.