Basal plane thermal conductivity of thin germanane layers

The thermal conductivity of thin Germanane (GeH) layers was measured using suspended micro-devices with integrated heaters and thermometers. The thermal contact resistance of the GeH samples suspended on the measurement devices was determined from the measured thermal resistance values of samples with different suspended lengths. The room-temperature thermal conductivity of the GeH samples was observed to be 0.6-1.0 Wm⁻¹K⁻¹. This low thermal conductivity is attributed to phonon scattering by defects and grain boundaries in the layered materials, including scattering caused by gangling bonds associated with missing Hydrogen atoms between adjacent layers.