A team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Material Science and Engineering researchers have solved a long-standing puzzle about lower measured thermal conductivity values of cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC) bulk crystals in the literature than the structurally more complex hexagonal phase SiC polytype (6H-SiC). The new measured thermal conductivity of bulk 3C-SiC has the second highest thermal conductivity among inch-scale large crystals, second only to diamond.
