DOI: 10.1007/s10765-006-0039-0 International Journal of Thermophysics, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 2006 (© 2006) Thermal Conductivity Measurements of Thin Insulating Layers Deposited on High-Conducting Sheets 1 M. Gustavsson 2,3 and L. H¨ alldahl 4 The thermal conductivity of thin insulating layers and coatings deposited on high-conducting sheets has been measured using the hot disk technique. The need for this type of measurements stems mainly from the electronics industry. In many situations, the materials supporting the thin layers or films are in the shape of thin sheets—often highly conducting ceramics, metals or anisotropic composites with a high-conducting component in the plane of the sheet. The present measurement setup has some interesting advantages with possibilities to design and optimize a system for performing convenient mea- surements on textiles. Although apparent properties are studied in the present investigation, the need to address thermal contact problems in general engi- neering constructions, including interfacial layers and thermal contact resis- tances, is discussed here. Experiences in this field indicate that, in order to perform correct thermal analysis and design, it is necessary to treat bulk material, thermal contact resistances, and interfaces separately. This is dem- onstrated by the fact that there is often a difference in interface conditions when performing a measurement as compared with the situation in which a manufactured component is being used. KEY WORDS: coatings; interfaces; layers; textiles; thermal conductivity. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. Thermal Conductivity and Materials Processing Through recent developments of measurement techniques, it is now possi- ble to perform sensitive measurements of bulk thermal transport properties, 1 Paper presented at the Seventh Asian Thermophysical Properties Conference, August 23– 28, 2004, Hefei and Huangshan, Anhui, P. R. China. 2 CIT Foundation, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 88 Gothenburg, Sweden. 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Gustavsson@cit.chalmers.se 4 Hot Disk AB., Salagatan 16 F, SE-753 30 Uppsala, Sweden. 195 0195-928X/06/0100-0195/0 © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.