Effects of surface chemistry on thermal conductance at aluminum–diamond interfaces

Synthetic diamond has potential as a heat spreading material in small-scale devices. Here, we report thermal conductance values at interfaces between aluminum and diamond with various surface terminations over a range of temperatures from 88 to 300 K. We find that conductance at oxygenated diamond interfaces is roughly four times higher than at hydrogen-treated diamond interfaces. Furthermore, we find that Al grain structure formation is not strongly dependent on diamond surface chemistry, which suggests that interfacial bonding influences thermal conductance. The results reported here will be useful for device design and for advancing models of interfacial heat flow.