Theory of sublinear power dependence for microwave heating in some ceramic materials

摘要

A sublinear dependence of the microwave heating rate on the incident microwave power implying a saturation effect appears to have been observed recently. We present simple model calculations to address this observation on the basis of an idea of spatial confinement of the absorbing charges in grain boundary regions. Two natural lengths exist in this model: the spatial extent of the confining region, and the maximum distance an absorbing charge travels under the combined action of damping and of the oscillating microwave field. We suggest that a mismatch of these lengths results in the observed saturation, more generally, in the observed decrease in absorption efficiency.