Dental Amalgam – Properties and Uses
Dental Amalgam - Properties and Uses
- Last updated November 23, 2025
✅ Objectives
By the end of these revision notes, you should be able to:
- Know about the basic properties of dental amalgam
- Understand the potential benefits of a high copper amalgam
- Know about mercury safety
- Know about the debate surrounding amalgam use
What is dental amalgam?
Dental amalgam is a widely used restorative material in dentistry, with several pieces of evidence of use going back several hundreds of years. Amalgam fillings are produced through the mixing of a metal alloy (predominantly silver) with mercury. Conventional dental amalgams have the following components:
There are three different types of particle compositions in amalgam alloys:
- Spherical
- Lathe-cut – irregular particles of a variety of sizes
- Admixed – this is a mixture of both spherical and lathe-cut particles
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