Pyroelectric Materials: Infrared Detectors, Particle Accelerators, and Energy Harvesters

Materials have played a revolutionary role in the development of the modern technological age, and their various applications have made our lives increasingly comfortable here on our home, the beautiful blue planet Earth. With the application of heat, pyroelectric materials produce electric current, qualifying them for use in uncooled infrared detectors. Infrared detectors are encountered in a vast number of applications in both war and peace—many of their uses are routine to us in everyday life.

With the advent of new technologies, thermal sensing and imaging have become useful diagnostictools for medical, industrial, and military applications. In medicine, infrared thermal imaging is applied todetect vascular disorders and arthritic rheumatisms as well as to monitor muscular performances and make preclinical diagnoses of breast cancer. Recently, these materials have been used in nuclear particlegeneration, and their usefulness in energy harvesting is currently under exploration.