Calorimetric analysis of commercial and dental waxes.

Dental waxes are often a blend of several waxes that are necessary to develop the most desirable qualities. In general, more information is available on physical properties and manipulation of dental waxes than on the composition or nature of the ingredients. Since heats of transition are fundamental in characterizing the chemical nature of matter, this information was obtained from waxes and blends and was correlated with other known properties to establish the behavior of the waxes and to eventually maximize the individual characteristics of each in blends. Calorimetric analyses of paraffin waxes have been conducted by several authors.1-4 These analyses characterized the heats of transition and the heats of fusion of commercial paraffin waxes and of comparable pure n-paraffins. A differential thermal analysis (DTA) study of waxes was done by the authors5 of the present study. The purpose of this study was to apply calorimetric analysis to the waxes used in dentistry. These waxes included binary mixtures of paraffin wax with carnauba and beeswax and several commercial dental waxes. Heats of transition were determined, and the interactions between waxes in the mixtures were evaluated as a function of composition and wax.