Influence of Er: YAG Laser Operating Parameters for Ablating Efficiency on Dental Hard Tissue

Er:YAG laser has a wavelength of 2.94 um whose energy can be absorbed effectively by water inside the dentin tissues and vaporization of the water occurs, with a rapid increase in the water's volume that induces a small explosion that removes the hard tissue efficiently. However, the factors affecting the efficiency of ablation with an Er: YAG laser remain unclear. To improve the ablating efficiency on dental hard tissue with the Er: YAG laser by investigating the ablating efficiency on dental hard tissue with different operating parameters of Er: YAG laser and morphological analysis of the processed surface, and accordingly the optimal operating parameters of Er:YAG laser for ablating dental hard tissue are obtained. 150 tooth fragments of isolated teeth with integrity surface selected as the sample were irradiated with an Er: YAG laser at different operating parameters to ablate dental hard tissue. The 54700 SEM was used to observe the morphological of samples to evaluate ablating quality and the FA1004 electronic balance used by weighing the mass of each tooth fragment before and after ablating to evaluate ablating quantity. Then ablating efficiencies are statistical, analyzed and evaluated. Experiments show that there is a strong positive correlation between Er: YAG output energy and ablating efficiency.