ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the theory of the thermal conductivity of nonmetallic solids. It presents the experimental information on the thermal conductivity of diamond single crystals and chemically vapor-deposited films. Propelled by rapid advances in the nonequilibrium growth from the vapor phase hopes have been rekindled that mass production of a high-quality single-crystal diamond will at last become a reality. The potential breakthrough in diamond technology has spurred researchers to examine more closely this material in both its natural and synthetic forms. Because the Debye temperature of diamond is very large, intrinsic phonon-phonon scattering is fairly weak at room temperature compared to other crystalline materials. Natural diamonds are in fact quite pure, with the exception of contamination by nitrogen to levels as high as 0.3%; in rare cases, doping by boron can occur.
