Microwave heating of pure copper powder with varying particle size and porosity.

In recent years, microwave processing of metal/alloy powders have gained considerable potential in the field of material synthesis. Microwave heating is recognized for its various advantages such as: time and energy saving, rapid heating rates, considerably reduced processing cycle time and temperature, fine microstructures and improved mechanical properties, better product performance, etc. Microwave material interaction for materials having bound charge are well established, but for highly conductive materials like metals, there is not much information available to interpret the mechanism of microwave heating and subsequent sintering of metallic materials. The present study describes how the thermal profile of electrically conductive powder metal like copper changes with particle size and also with porosity content; in other words, initial green density when the material is exposed to 2.45 GHz microwave radiation in a multimode microwave furnace.