Poppy Puspitasari
The more increasing severe impact of the use of mercury on health, particularly of the amalgam material, has required an alternative innovation in order to eliminate the composition of mercury and amalgam. One of the innovative breakthroughs is by applying the nanotechnology to ZnO, which is an alternative material expectedly to have better physical features and compressibility. These physical features including the morphology, dimensions, and the comparison ratio of atoms were analyzed through the test of XRD, XRF, SEM, and EDX characterization. Further, as regards the compressibility features, the compressibility test was carried out using the hydraulic pressing machine with the power of 100–4000 kg. This test employed various compression loadings (500, 1000, and 2000 kg) with a variety of dwelling times (30, 60, and 90 s) purposely to observe its effect on the density of ZnO nanoparticles. The result of this research of the physical properties of this material shows that the analyzed ZnO has particles of size 14.34 nm with the morphology classified as nanorods. In the compressibility test, the variation of compression loadings has revealed an effect on the significant increase of density of ZnO nanoparticles. At a compression loading of 500 kg, the average density of ZnO is 3.170 g/cm3 with a 4.763% increase on addition of the compression loading to 1000 kg. Subsequently, another increase in the density takes place by 7.539% when the compression loading attains 2000 kg. The variation of the dwelling times also contributed to an equal effect in which at a dwelling time of 30 s the average density of ZnO was 3.260 g/cm3, at a dwelling time of 60 s it increased by 0.583%, and at a dwelling time of 90 s it again increased by 3.098%. © 2013 by Begell House, Inc.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia
