Effect of microwave on lamellar parameters of rice starch through small-angle X-ray scattering

Due to the extensive application of microwave heating on the starch materials, it is, therefore, of interest to investigate the changes of lamellar architecture during microwave processing. In this work, rapid convection heating is also applied through an oil bath for comparison. The ultrastructure of rice starch is studied using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and the linear correlation function is generated from SAXS data to obtain the parameters of the lamellar repeats architecture. The results show that the lamellar changes of samples treated by microwave and rapid convection heating sustain similar trends during heating, suggesting that the effect of microwave heating on submicroscopic structure of starch may be mainly due to its rapid heating rate. The molecular vibration of the microwaves slightly influences the lamellar structure.