Pyroelectricity: A Brief History of its Discovery and Physical Principles - an Overview
Abstract
This paper deals with the historical development and physical mechanisms of pyroelectricity, a phe-nomenon whose roots date back over 2000 years to ancient times. This paper is aimed at students and engineers as a concise introduction to the subject area. While the attractive effect of heated tourma-line was already described by Theophrastus, scientific systematization did not occur until the 18th century by researchers, such as Aepinus and Canton, who identified the effect of electrical polarization resulting from temperature changes. This essay highlights the path from early analogies to magnetism to the modern crystallographic description by Haüy and Thomson. In the physics section, pyroelectricity is defined as the temperature dependence of the spontaneous polarization in anisotropic solids. At the microscopic level, the permanent dipole moment of an elementary cell is described by the vector sum of individual moments. It is mathematically demonstrated that the macroscopic spontaneous polarization correlates with the surface charge density and is linked to the temperature change via the pyroelectric cofficient. A distinction was made between the primary pyroelectric effect and the secondary effect resulting from the thermal deformation of the crystal. Finally, the renaissance of this field of research through the development of modern infrared detectors and ferroelectric materials in the 20th century was highlighted.
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BibTeX
@misc{ballas2026pyroelectricity,
title = {{Pyroelectricity: A Brief History of its Discovery and Physical Principles - an Overview}},
author = {Ruediger G. Ballas and Nataliya Koev},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.23736},
eprint = {2609.23736},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23736},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Pyroelectricity: A Brief History of its Discovery and Physical Principles - an Overview
AU - Ruediger G. Ballas
AU - Nataliya Koev
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.23736
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.23736
AB - This paper deals with the historical development and physical mechanisms of pyroelectricity, a phe-nomenon whose roots date back over 2000 years to ancient times. This paper is aimed at students and engineers as a concise introduction to the subject area. While the attractive effect of heated tourma-line was already described by Theophrastus, scientific systematization did not occur until the 18th century by researchers, such as Aepinus and Canton, who identified the effect of electrical polarization resulting from temperature changes. This essay highlights the path from early analogies to magnetism to the modern crystallographic description by Haüy and Thomson. In the physics section, pyroelectricity is defined as the temperature dependence of the spontaneous polarization in anisotropic solids. At the microscopic level, the permanent dipole moment of an elementary cell is described by the vector sum of individual moments. It is mathematically demonstrated that the macroscopic spontaneous polarization correlates with the surface charge density and is linked to the temperature change via the pyroelectric cofficient. A distinction was made between the primary pyroelectric effect and the secondary effect resulting from the thermal deformation of the crystal. Finally, the renaissance of this field of research through the development of modern infrared detectors and ferroelectric materials in the 20th century was highlighted.
ER -