ABSTRACT
Dental caries is known as the destruction of dental hard tissues by acidic by-products from bacterial metabolism of dietary carbohydrates. Despite the great efforts in caries prevention, it is still one significant public health problem globally, and dental restorations are the most commonly used approach to restore decayed teeth. This chapter outlines essential features and problems of current restorative dental biomaterials on purpose to serve as a background for understanding the facing challenges in the field. Resin composites consist of three major components: initiator system, resin matrix, and filler. The modification of components in the composite has been the focus of intensive research in recent years, which yielded different classes of polymeric restorative materials with tuned formulations such as packable composites, flowable composites, polyacid modified resin composites (compomers), self-adhesive composites, infiltration resins, and bulk-fill resin composites. Bonding system is one of the branches of dental restorative dentistry, and its primary aim is to provide retention of restorations.
