Synthesis and Characterization of Silica ...

Enterococcus faecalis is a leading cause of bacterial persistence root canal infections. These bacteria have the ability to invade dentinal tubule size which is very small between 1-3μm causing difficulty drug penetration to eliminate root canal. 2% Chlorhexidine is recommended as a remedy to eliminate root canal bacteria. Root canal drugs should remain stable in solution and remain active despite the blood, serum and tissue protein derivatives. Necessary efforts to protect the root canal medication microencapsulation ahould be made. In this research, 2% chlorhexidine microencapsulation process measures less than 1 μm by using sodium silicate as a precursor. The method used is solgel with the Stober process. Clustering using chitosan and sodium alginate material made to encapsulate 2% chlorhexidine in higher numbers. The purpose of this study was to obtain silica microcapsules with active compounds 2% chlorhexidine the size of less than 1 μm homogeneously and analyze its release rate at pH 6.5 as the pH of the inflamed root canal. The evaluation of the succession of the microencapsulation process is characterization of SEM, FTIR and BET, while the rate of spending chlorhexidine (release rate) of the microcapsules is calculated using a UV-Vis spectrophotometry. The results showed that the microcapsules measures less than 1 μm with a release rate of 0.0286 ppm per minute for 55 minutes.