materials - Why does diamond conduct heat better than graphite?

Our teachers made us accept (without any explanation) that diamond conducts heat better than graphite. What is the reason behind this (alleged) fact?

Answer

Diamond is one of the best thermal conductors known, in fact diamond is a better thermal conductor than many metals (thermal conductivity (W/m-K): aluminum=237, copper=401, diamond=895). The carbon atoms in diamond are $\ce{sp^3}$ hybridized and every carbon is bonded to 4 other carbon atoms located at the vertices of a tetrahedron. Hence the bonding in diamond is a uniform, continuous 3-dimensional network of $\ce{C-C}$ single (sigma) bonds. Graphite on the other hand is formed from $\ce{sp^2}$ hybridized carbon atoms that form a continuous 2-dimensional sigma and pi bonding network. This 2-dimensional network forms sheets of graphite, but there is little connection between the sheets, in fact, the sheet-sheet separation is a whopping ~3.4 angstroms. This might lead us to suspect that heat conduction in the 2-dimensional sheet of graphite would be superior to diamond, but that heat conduction between graphite sheets would be very low. This is, in fact, an accurate description of thermal conduction in graphite. Thermal conductivity parallel to the graphite sheets=1950, but thermal conduction perpendicular to the sheet=5.7. Therefor, when we consider thermal conduction over all possible directions (anisotropic) diamond would be superior to graphite.