Rhodium-coated dental mirrors surpass chromium and stainless steel in performance and reliability
Beyond the standard oral x-rays taken by dental professionals, high-quality reflective mirrors are required for intraoral photography to see gum and teeth details that enable orthodontists to properly diagnose and resolve soft-tissue oral diseases and other visible surface problems. The desire to maximize image quality means that standard chromium or stainless-steel mirrors will often fall short of the reflectivity and ruggedness required in a dental office setting.
Using metal-coating processes involving a combination of physical vapor deposition and electroplating, rhodium-coated RioFoto dental mirrors from EMF (Ithaca, NY), a Dynasil company, feature better reflectivity (73%) over the visible 450–650 nm range—around 10% higher than stainless steel (64%) and chromium (63%) mirrors. And, while all dental mirrors pass the MIL-M-13508C moderate abrasion test, RioFoto dental mirrors pass the more stringent MIL-C-675C severe abrasion test. Besides enabling long life and real-world wear and tear, the severe abrasion test is important for dental mirrors that are often sterilized in high-temperature autoclave machines between applications. The mirror designs include buccal, lingual, and occlusal among standard offerings; custom mirror designs and sizes are available upon request. Reference: http://bit.ly/Dynasil.
Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)
Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.