The microwave-assisted leaching was a new approach to intensify the copper recovery from chalcopyrite by hydrometallurgy. In this work, the effect of microwave-assisted heating on chalcopyrite leaching of kinetics, interfacial reaction temperature and surface energy were investigated. The activation energy of chalcopyrite leaching was affected indistinctively by the microwave-assisted heating (39.1 kJ/mol) compared with the conventional heating (43.9 kJ/mol). However, the boiling point of the leaching system increased through microwave-assisted heating. Because of the improved boiling point and the selective heating of microwave, the interfacial reaction temperature increased significantly, which gave rise to the increase of the leaching recovery of copper. Moreover, the surface energy of the chalcopyrite through microwave-assisted heating was also enhanced, which was beneficial to strengthen the leaching of chalcopyrite. Keywords: Microwave-assisted heating, Chalcopyrite, Leaching kinetics, Interface temperature, Surface energy