A team led by Christopher Bowman, School of Dental Medicine, Restorative Dentistry, has been awarded a patent for a new material that reduces shrinkage stress in dental resins. This material enables more durable dental restorations such as fillings, crowns and bridges.

The research leading to development of this material was supported by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to develop novel dental restorative materials.

“We were examining a range of chemistries and approaches that we thought might aid in reducing the stress while preserving other desirable material properties,” explained Bowman.

His team includes researchers from  CU-Boulder’s College of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Chemical & Biological Engineering.

“For many years, we have looked at approaches for making ’adaptable networks’ that are basically polymers within which the chemical bond structure is dynamic — in this manner the material can alleviate stresses,” Bowman said. “This general approach already has been commercialized in a recently launched 3M product, and we hope the specific approaches invented as a part of our patent also will be commercialized.” But Bowman noted that the development process often can take years.

The new CU patent is part of a large U.S. and international portfolio of intellectual property stemming from an application filed by CU Tech Transfer on behalf of the university in 2005. U.S. 8,877,830 (“Stress relief for crosslinked polymers”) was issued on Nov. 4, 2014.

Former Chemical and Biological Engineering research colleagues Chris Kloxin, Hee Young Park and Diana Leung are also inventors on this patent.