High thermal conductivity of a hydrogenated amorphous silicon film

We measured the thermal conductivity κ of an 80μm thick hydrogenated amorphous silicon film prepared by hot-wire chemical-vapor deposition with the 3ω (80-300 K) and the time-domain thermoreflectance (300 K) methods. The κ is higher than any of the previous temperature dependent measurements and shows a strong phonon mean free path dependence. We also applied a Kubo based theory using a tight-binding method on three 1000 atom continuous random network models. The theory gives higher κ for more ordered models, but not high enough to explain our results, even after extrapolating to lower frequencies with a Boltzmann approach. Our results show that this material is more ordered than any amorphous silicon previously studied.