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) × 10^-2, -(3.15 ± 0.14) × 10^-2 and -(3.78 ± 0.16) × 10^-2 cm^-1·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·m^-1·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.