Molecular dipole electrets

Abstract

The total polarization due to molecular dipoles in a glassy electret is computed using an Onsager cavity approach. From this result, all the possible contributions to the piezoelectric and pyroelectric coefficients are considered. It is shown that there are major contributions from the variation in dielectric constant and, for pyroelectricity, from thermal motion. These results account well for experimental data for polyvinyl chloride.