Current composites are made with dimethacrylate monomers and silane-treated silica microfillers, either alone or with silane treated glass fillers. The main reasons for clinical failure of dental composites are secondary caries, wear and fracture. Most of practitioner want to get a composite which is more tougher under occlusal stress, less polymerization contraction, and better handling properties in application clinically. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of resin matrix with various flows on the physical properties such as fracture toughness and degree of conversion of the experimental resins. It was hypothesized that flexible or tough resin composites can be designed by judicious choice of monomer composition.

Various flow resin matrices containing Bis-GMA, UDMA, and TEG-DMA were made by altering the proportion of the monomers. After the unfilled resins were light-cured for different light intensity, the fracture toughness(K_1c) was measured according to ASTM standard using the single edge notched geometry, and degree of conversion(DC) was measured by FTIR. And experimental composites were formulated with variations in the proportion of silanated quartz and strontium glass fillers as 60, 75, and 77wt%. Also, the physical properties of composites with various filler contents were evaluated as same manner. All resulting data were compared by ANOVA/Tukeys test at 0.05 level.

The results were as follows;

1. The degree of conversion of high flow resin containing less Bis-GMA was higher than that of low flow unfilled resin.

2. While the degree of conversion of unfilled resin was increased according to light intensity for polymerization, there was no significant increase with moderate and high light intensity. Also, the fracture toughness was not increased by high light intensity.

3. The fracture toughness was high in the low flow unfilled resin containing higher contents of Bis-GMA.

4. There was a significant increase for fracture toughness and a tendency for degree of conversion to be reduced when the content of fillers was increased.

5. In the experimental composites, the flow of resin matrix did not affected on the fracture toughness, even, which was decreased as increase of viscosity.

These results showed that the physical properties of a dental composite could be attributed to the flow of resin matrix with relative content of monomers. Specific combination of resin monomers should be designed to fulfil the needs of specific indication for use.