  We use the Schwinger-Dyson equations in the presence of a thermal bath, in
order to study chiral symmetry breaking in a system of massless Dirac fermions
interacting through pseudo quantum electrodynamics (PQED3), in (2+1)
dimensions. We show that there is a critical temperature $T_c$, below which
chiral symmetry is broken, and a corresponding mass gap is dynamically
generated, provided the coupling is above a certain, temperature dependent,
critical value $\alpha_c$. The ratio between the energy gap and the critical
temperature for this model is estimated to be $2 \pi$. These results are
confirmed by analytical and numerical investigations of the Schwinger-Dyson
equation for the electron. In addition, we calculate the first
finite-temperature corrections to the static Coulomb interaction. The relevance
of this result in the realm of condensed matter systems, like graphene, is
briefly discussed.
