New High-Palladium Casting Alloys: Part 1. Overview and Initial Studies

High-palladium alloys for metal ceramic restorations, based on the Pd-Cu-Ga and Pd-Ga systems, were introduced to the dental profession during the past decade. These alloys have become increasingly popular because they are much less expensive than the gold-based alloys, and recently marketed high-palladium alloy compositions have excellent mechanical properties. A summary of the important melting and casting considerations for these somewhat technique-sensitive alloys is presented together with an overview of important dental materials science aspects and the results of a dental laboratory survey. A maxillary central incisor coping was chosen as the clinically appropriate specimen shape, and the gas-oxygen torch melting technique was found to produce castings with clinically acceptable levels of marginal sharpness and little evidence of microporosity. The etched as-cast high-palladium alloys exhibited fine-scale multiphase microstructures, and a noteworthy finding was that relative proportions of the microstructural constituents frequently varied for thin versus thick sections of the cast specimens.