Nanomagnetic hyperthermia (NMH) is intensively studied with the prospect of cancer therapy. A major challenge is to determine the dissipated power during in vivo conditions and conventional methods are either invasive or inaccurate. We present a non-calorimetric method which yields the heat absorbed during hyperthermia: it is based on accurately measuring the quality factor change of a resonant radio frequency circuit which is employed for the irradiation. The approach provides the absorbed power in real-time, without the need to monitor the sample temperature as a function of time. As such, it is free from the problems caused by the non-adiabatic heating conditions of the usual calorimetry. We validate the method by comparing the dissipated power with a conventional calorimetric measurement. We present the validation for two types of resonators with very different filling factors: a solenoid and a so-called birdcage coil. The latter is a volume coil, which is generally used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) under in vivo condition. The presented method therefore allows to effectively combine MRI and thermotherapy and is thus readily adaptable to existing imaging hardware.

The microwave cavity perturbation method is often used to determine material parameters (electric permittivity and magnetic permeability) at high frequencies and it relies on measurement of the resonator parameters. We present a method to determine the Q-factor and resonance frequency of microwave resonators which is conceptually simple but provides a sensitivity for these parameters which overcomes those of existing methods by an order of magnitude. The microwave resonator is placed in a feedback resonator setup, where the output of an amplifier is connected to its own input with the resonator as a band pass filter. After reaching steady-state oscillation, the feedback circuit is disrupted by a fast microwave switch and the transient signal, which emanates from the resonator, is detected using down-conversion. The Fourier transform of the resulting time-dependent signal yields directly the resonance profile of the resonator. Albeit the method is highly accurate, this comes with a conceptual simplicity, ease of implementation and lower circuit cost. We compare existing methods for this type of measurement to explain the sensitivity of the present technique and we also make a prediction for the ultimate accuracy for the resonator Q and f 0 determination.

Microwave reflectance probed photoconductivity (or µ-PCD) measurement represents a contactless and non-invasive method to characterize impurity content in semiconductors. Major drawbacks of the method include a difficult separation of reflectance due to dielectric and conduction effects and that the µ-PCD signal is prohibitively weak for highly conducting samples. Both of these limitations could be tackled with the use of microwave resonators due to the well-known sensitivity of resonator parameters to minute changes in the material properties combined with a null measurement. A general misconception is that time resolution of resonator measurements is limited beyond their bandwidth by the readout electronics response time. While it is true for conventional resonator measurements, such as those employing a frequency sweep, we present a time-resolved resonator parameter readout method which overcomes these limitations and allows measurement of complex material parameters and to enhance µ-PCD signals with the ultimate time resolution limit being the resonator time constant. This is achieved by detecting the transient response of microwave resonators on the timescale of a few 100 ns during the µ-PCD decay signal. The method employs a high-stability oscillator working with a fixed frequency which results in a stable and highly accurate measurement.

Characterization of electronic properties of novel materials is of great importance for exploratory materials development and also for the discovery of new correlated phases. As several novel compounds are available in powder form only, contactless methods, which also work on air‐sensitive samples, are highly desired. We present that the microwave cavity perturbation technique is a versatile tool to study conductivity in such systems. The examples include studies on semiconducting–metallic crossover in carbon nanotubes upon alkali doping, study of vortex motion in the K3C60 superconductor, and the characterization of various alkali atom doped phases of black phosphorus.

Microwave impedance measurements indicate a nonlinear absorption anomaly in single‐walled carbon nanotubes at low temperatures (below 20 K). We investigate the nature of the anomaly using a time resolved microwave impedance measurement technique. It proves that the anomaly has an extremely slow, a few hundred second long dynamics. This strongly suggests that the anomaly is not caused by an intrinsic electronic effect and that it is rather due to a slow heat exchange between the sample and the environment.