The c-axis thermal conductivity of graphite film of nanometer thickness measured by time resolved X-ray diffraction

We report on the use of time resolved X-ray diffraction to measure the dynamics of strain in laser-excited graphite film of nanometer thickness, obtained by chemical vapour deposition (CVD). Heat transport in the CVD film is simulated with a 1-dimensional heat diffusion model. We find the experimental data to be consistent with a c-axis thermal conductivity of similar to 0.7 Wm(-1) K-1. This value is four orders of magnitude lower than the thermal conductivity in-plane, confirming recent theoretical calculations of the thermal conductivity of multilayer graphene. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4769214