with heating rates of 557 C/min and 384 C/min respectively, whereas mercury and
magnesium displayed modest heating with heating rates of approximately 7 C/min and
17 C/min respectively.
Comparing the heating characteristics of the metals and selected ceramic oxides from
the study in Table 4.1, it can be observed that, in general, most powdered metals are able
to display good heating characteristics that are comparable to or even better than the
oxides. This experiment clearly demonstrated the ability of metal powders to interact
with microwaves and be heated significantly, contrary to the behavior exhibited by bulk
metals.
An attempt to correlate the heating characteristics of the metals using the data in Table 4.1
with their penetration depths, Dp, calculated in Table 2.4, does not seem to reveal any
relationship between the heating rate and the penetration depth (penetration depth, Dp, is
represented by the line shown in Figure 4.2). However, this may be due to two factors. First,
the nonuniformity in the powder size of all the metals being characterized may influence the
heating behavior, since the powder size is an important factor determining the heating
behavior of the metal. Second, the values of resistivity, conductivity and the magnetic
properties of the metals are measured for bulk material and are sensitive to temperature,
material defects and processing history, thus it may not be a true representative when the
material exists in small particle sizes and under different processing conditions. In-depth
analysis and additional tests are required to confirm this. Measurements of the resistivity or
conductivity and the magnetic properties of metal powders under different conditions are
also required.
The penetration depth or skin depth for most metals at microwave frequencies is limited to
only a few microns at room temperature, as can be seen in Table 2.4. The skin depth slowly
increases with increasing temperature and can be raised by a factor of two to ten times when
the temperature is approaching the melting point of the metal [10]. Also, the resistivity, r, of
the metal generally increases with temperature and may increase abruptly by about a factor
of two at the melting point [10], thus increasing the skin depth which is correlated by
Equation (2.13), reproduced below.
d ¼
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffirffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
pfm0m0
r
Generally, the resistivity of pure metals increases linearly with increasing temperature due
to the reduced mobility of electrons at elevated temperature, and the change in resistivity
with temperature can be estimated using Equation (4.1) [11].
r ¼ rRTð1 þ aRDTÞ ð4:1Þ
where rRT is the resistivity at room temperature, DT is the temperature difference between
the elevated temperature and room temperature and aR is the temperature resistivity
coefficient.
Recent studies by Ripley et al. [12] have observed enhanced microwave absorption by
near-molten metals in a highly nonlinear fashion that is contrary to the general linear