Morphable Liquid-Metal Concentrators to Improve Microwave Heating Efficiency

In this work, two morphable liquid-metal concentrators, the shell and flower, were proposed to improve the heating efficiency in the microwave reaction cavity. The concentrators, containing Gaussian and static cells, would inflate when additional liquid metal was pumped into the Gaussian cells, reflecting more microwaves to the heated sample, and improving the heating efficiency. To demonstrate the heating efficiency, two multiphysics heating models set with the shell and flower concentrators were designed. To validate the simulation results, an experimental system was built, and the corresponding experiments were carried out. The agreement of the simulation and experiment results validated and provided a novel route for designing the concentrators to improve microwave heating efficiency.