Conductivity in human tooth enamel

When human tooth enamel is heated either in vacuum or air it presents drastic changes in electrical susceptibility, conductivity and structural properties. In this paper we report an insulator-conductive transition which is observed in air around 350 degrees C where enamel conductivity changes drastically and its electrical resistance decreases from 10(15) to 10(5) Omega; that is, it goes from an insulator to a super-ionic ceramic behavior. This transition, first evidenced in vacuum by electron microscopy observations, is now completely determined by a.c. impedance spectroscopy technique and its characterization was carried out as a function of the frequency and temperature. X-ray in situ heating diffraction experiments show that there is no structural phase transition during a wide range of temperature including the one where the conductivity transition occurs. (C) 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers.