Fillings

Since the mid-70’s, we have been able to bond tooth colored dental material or fillings to enamel.  Even when I entered dental school in 1975, we could replace a chip on a front tooth by bonding.   It works like this:  W e  first  do is place a mild acid on the tooth.  This etching process creates million of rough surfaces that we can then place a clean bonding agent, or resin which latches into the roughened enamel surface, creating a micro-mechanical adhesion.  We then place the tooth colored filling material over that resin, which bonds to the resin chemically.

Well if this process has been around so long, what improvements have you seen in the material you now use over the earlier materials?