Thermal measurements on diamond and related materials

Abstract The outstanding thermal conductivity of CVD diamond gives rise to many potential industrial applications, necessitating the availability of reliable, standardized, thermal measurement methods. Although, in general, these measurements are in agreement for traditional materials, for CVD diamond different measurement methods can yield significantly different values for comparable or even identical samples. The aim of this work is to compare the methods and estimate to what extent these variations may be caused by the inhomogeneity and anisotropy of the samples themselves. Using a six-layer model to represent a typical CVD diamond layer, the potential signals for the principal methods are calculated and the results are compared.