High thermal conductivity of suspended few-layer hexagonal boron nitride sheets

The thermal conduction of suspended few-layer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) sheets was experimentally investigated using a noncontact micro-Raman spectroscopy method. The first-order temperature coefficients for monolayer (1L), bilayer (2L) and nine-layer (9L) h-BN sheets were measured to be -(3.41 +/- 0.12) x 10(-2), -(3.15 +/- 0.14) x 10(-2) and -(3.78 +/- 0.16) x 10(-2) cm(-1)center dot K-1, respectively. The room-temperature thermal conductivity of few-layer h-BN sheets was found to be in the range from 227 to 280 W center dot m(-1)center dot K-1, which is comparable to that of bulk h-BN, indicating their potential use as important components to solve heat dissipation problems in thermal management configurations.