What is Pekkton (PEKK)?
PEKK is a thermoplastic polyaryletherketone or PAEK. It is similar to PEEK, whose main dental use is for temporary dental implant abutments. The patent for PEKK is owned by this company and Anaxadent is the US distributor. However, Ultaire AKP is also PAEK material so not sure if the patent is being licensed or just that slight difference exist. It is being marketed as a metal replacement for dental implant cases and implant supported denture or bridge cases. Recently dental labs and using it for frameworks in replacement for metal.
PEKK advantages for dentistry.
It is especially interesting because it has compression abilities and acts as a shock absorber. This is what the 3M Lava crowns were originally trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, Lava crowns inability to remain cemented on implant abutments caused many to stop using the material. The advantage of having some compression in our implant prosthesis is that they will then act more like natural teeth. PEKK compression ability will hopefully compensate for the lack of pdl. The reason for not using this full contour is that it is currently not tooth white, but is instead more of a bone color.
We may see future overdenture inserts made of PEKK instead of nylon as they hold up better according to Choi JOMI 2018
Could this be the the material that will result in crowns being 3D printed in our offices? I think this is on the right path!
As you can see from this pyramid, we have PMMA, that we use for implant supported denture temporaries, along with other polymers at the base. PEKK and PEEK are at the top of the pyramid, apparently meant to represent more strength.
We can use these products in a CAD CAM mill or press them via lost wax technique. It can also work as a crown coping and have composite or emax over the top of it. For the large implant cases, there are some really nice examples online of full arches that use PEKK as the framework and have emax or zirconia crowns over that.
Want to see PEKK in action?
What is PEEK?
PEEK is very similar to PEKK above, therefore many of the uses are the same. I use PEEK on a regular basis for immediate anterior temporary implant crowns. It is on the market under the trade name Juvora dental disc and PEEK can be a CAD CAM product to replace metal. It comes in a non-esthetic gray color but we can cover it with other more esthetic products. PEEK has excellent shock absorbing traits that make it ideal for bruxism patients with dental implants. It is radiolucent so it will not hide anything on an x-ray. The down side to that is that you can not tell if it seated on the x-ray. I am unsure why someone would use this over PEKK but these materials are new to dentistry so their will be some experimenting.
How can you bond to PEEK?
Sandblast the surface and use thin layer methyl methacrylate and the composite resin primer visio.link primer. Gouveia JPD 2022
BioHPP by Bredent is another PEEK product.
Other high strength polymers
- Dentivra milling discs made of Ultaire AKP (aryl ketone polymer) is also a PAEK
- Polyvenylidenfluoriden PVDF (similar to PA and POM above)
- PMMA based puck aka the denture puck
PMMA brands that test strong in Yilmaz JPD 2018 are GDS Temp-CAD and Polident.