Development of a compact cylindrical reaction cavity for a microwave dielectric heating system

This paper describes a compact reaction cavity for a microwave-assisted synthesis system. The microwave dielectric heating is a key technology to improve synthesizing yield, however, the large size of the microwave generation and reaction parts in an all-in-one system is a major obstacle when applying the technique to various systems, of which the installation space is limited. For this particular problem, a compact stand-alone cylindrical reaction cavity was developed in the current study. A microwave excited from a monopole probe, which is inserted into the side of the cavity, is transferred to a reaction mixture through the upper hole of the cavity. The cavity is miniaturized by filling it with an alumina ceramic dielectric. Fine-tuning of the resonance frequency becomes available by controlling the length of the inserted screw between the probe and the upper hole. The physical properties of the cavity were simulated using high frequency structural simulator (HFSS) and the produced cavity was tested using an Agilent E8357A network analyzer. The test results show that the developed cavity is able to send enough energy to various solvents.