Thermal conductivity of wurtzite gallium nitride

This paper reviews the theoretical and experimental works concerning one of the most important parameters of wurtzite gallium nitride – thermal conductivity. Since the heat in gallium nitride is transported almost exclusively by phonons, its thermal conductivity has a temperature behavior typical of most nonmetallic crystals: the thermal conductivity increases proportionally to the third power of temperature at lower temperatures, reaches its maximum at approximately 1/20 of the Debye temperature and decreases proportionally to temperature at higher temperatures. It is shown that the thermal conductivity of gallium nitride (depending on fabrication process, crystallographic direction, concentration of impurity and other defects, isotopical purity) varies significantly, emphasizing the importance of determining this parameter for the samples that closely resemble those being used in specific applications. For isotopically pure undoped wurtzite gallium nitride, the thermal conductivity at room temperature has been estimated as high as 5.4 W/(cm·K). The maximum room temperature value measured for bulkshaped samples of single crystal gallium nitride has been 2.79 W/(cm·K).