On the Debye temperature in the Slack approximation for an estimation of the thermal conductivity of nonmetallic compounds

The value of the Debye temperature of the acoustic modes, as required in the application of Slack's approximation [G. A. Slack, Solid State Physics, edited by F. Seitz, D. Turnbull, and H. Ehrenreich, (Academic, New York, 1979), Vol. 34, pp. 1–71] for the thermal conductivity, is not always available. It is shown that for these cases, the value at the minimum of the curve of the Debye temperature versus the temperature obtained from specific-heat data, gives a good approximation.