Objectives: Single-component anaerobic adhesives are in common use in the electronics and engineering industries. They are generally diacrylate monomers which do not require conventional sources of heat, light or chemicals for activation. Their advantages include activation by the bonding substrate, as well as inhibition of polymerisation until the necessary anaerobic environment is created. The aim of this experiment was to determine whether metal attachments could be successfully bonded to enamel in vitro by such adhesives.
Methods: Metal attachments capable of providing an anaerobic environment were fabricated from one of three alloys: stainless steel, copper or cobalt-chromium. They were bonded to prepared human enamel with one of four adhesives: Orthodontic Concise, as a control, and three anaerobic adhesives, Perma Metal, Permabond A134 and Loctite 326. The specimens were then bond tested in shear to failure after bench curing for one of four time periods.
Results: The results were analysed in terms of mean force to debond (N) and 95% confidence intervals. Kaplan-Meier survival probabilities and log-rank tests were performed for the 10 min test times.
Conclusions: Both Orthodontic Concise and the three anaerobic adhesives displayed a specificity towards different attachment alloys. Whereas Orthodontic Concise displayed the highest force to debond with stainless steel attachments, for the anaerobic adhesives this was true of the copper attachments. With stainless steel attachments, however, the force to debond with the anaerobic adhesives was similar to that observed with Orthodontic Concise and steel, at least after the relatively short 10 min bench curing time.