Experimental evidence of a microwave non-thermal effect in electrolyte aqueous solutions

Abstract

Microwave non-thermal effects have aroused extensive attention. Some studies have affirmed that microwave non-thermal effects can never be observed below electric field intensities of 10⁷ V m⁻¹. In this paper, a precisely designed experiment was used to corroborate the existence of a microwave non-thermal effect in electrolyte aqueous solutions. The measurements were carried out at 2.45 GHz and the electric field magnitude was in the order of 10⁴ V m⁻¹. The electrical conductivity (EC) of sodium chloride aqueous solutions can be changed using microwaves. The measured effect is related to the concentration and temperature of the solution, and we used techniques to exclude the temperature effect in our experiments. The results validate the existence of a non-thermal microwave effect.