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Microwave container with dielectric structure of varying properties and method of using same
| Details |
Inventors: Keefer, Richard M.;
Assignee: Alcan International Limited (Montreal, CA)
Primary Examiner: Leung; Philip H.
Assistant Examiner:
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Cooper & Dunham
A container for holding a body of material such as foodstuff to be heated in a microwave oven, including a dielectric lid and/or other dielectric wall structure with at least two ontiguous dielectric wall portions of respectively different electrical thickness for cooperatively modifying the microwave electric field patterns that would obtain in the body during such heating if the lid and/or other dielectric wall structure were of uniform electrical thickness or were absent. At least one of the portions, preferably the portion of higher electrical thickness, may be so constituted as to undergo a change in dielectric constant during the microwave heating, thereby to alter the heating distribution in the body as heating proceeds. |
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention, in a first aspect, broadly contemplates the provision of a container for holding a body of material to be heated in a microwave oven, including a dielectric wall structure comprising at least two continguous dielectric wall portions of respectively different electrical thickness for cooperatively modifying the microwave electric field pattern that would obtain in the body during such heating if the wall structure were of uniform electrical thickness or were absent.
In one more particular sense, the present invention, in common with that described in the aforementioned copending application, contemplates the provision of a container for containing a material to be heated in a microwave oven, this container comprising an open-topped tray for carrying the material and a lid covering the tray to form a closed cavity, the container being characterized in that at least one extended surface of the container is formed with means for modifying the microwave electric field pattern in the container by generating a mode of a higher order than that of the fundamental modes of the container, the modifying means being so dimensioned and positioned with respect to the material when in the container that the mode so generated propagates into the material thereby to locally heat the material.
In accordance with the present invention, however, the modifying means comprises at least a first dielectric wall portion of the container defining a first region of the extended surface and a second dielectric wall portion of the container defining a second region of the extended surface contiguously surrounding the first region, one of these two wall portions having an electrical thickness substantially greater than that of the other.
That is to say, whereas the structures specifically described in the aforementioned copending application utilize surface-defining combinations of electrically conductive (e.
g.
, metal plate or sheet) regions and dielectric (microwave-transparent) regions to constitute the higher order mode generating means, the present invention embraces the discovery that useful field-modifying or mode-generating effects can be achieved with a dielectric (i
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Heat Accumulators 
