Effect of Auxiliary Address Pulses on the Luminous Efficacy in AC Plasma Display Panel With Grooved Dielectric Layer

This paper investigates the effect of applying auxiliary short pulses to an address electrode with varying Xe contents on the improvement of luminous efficacy. The luminous efficacy increases with the application of auxiliary pulse; however, as the Xe content increases in the Ne-Xe mixture discharge gas, the efficacy improvement effect by auxiliary address pulse discharge decreases. The surface discharge was hardly affected by the face ignition discharge between the address and sustain electrodes, and thus, the high-driving-voltage problem still remains when the high-Xe-content gas is used to get the high luminous efficacy. To decrease the sustain voltages of the high-Xe-content gas, we adopted locally thin dielectric layer structure near the electrode gap. The panel with the suggested grooved dielectric layer structure showed decreased driving voltage margin and improved luminous efficacy even for high-Xe-content gases. We obtained 5 lm/W and 3700 cd/m² at 220-V, 50-kHz continuous sustaining condition from a monochrome green test panel with the Ne-Xe (16%) mixture, which was about two-and-a-half times improved luminous efficacy as compared to that of the reference structure with Ne-Xe (4%). Full driving feasibility was also checked by applying the auxiliary address pulses to the grooved structure panel. The misaddressing could occur when the auxiliary pulses are applied continuously to the address electrodes in the sustain period, which decreased the driving voltage margin. However, this demerit can be compensated by lowering the driving voltage margin with the adoption of the grooved structure. Also, the address discharge delay decreased by about 48% in the panel with the grooved structure.

I. Introduction

Alternating current plasma display panel (ac PDP) is one of the most promising large-sized flat panel displays of size bigger than 40 in, which currently competes with other candidates such as liquid crystal display (LCD), projection display, etc. In spite of the good characteristics of plasma display, which include wide viewing angle, good color gamut, and capability to expand larger sizes up to 100 in, its greatest demerit is the large power consumption. Although the actual power consumption of plasma display with common television contents was proved to be similar to that of LCD, which consumes constant backlight power [1], the average luminance level is still lower than that of LCD. In flat panel device market, the needs for high resolution and large size are showing an increasing trend. It is well known that the luminous efficacy of PDP decreases as the pixel resolution increases [2]. Accordingly, the luminous efficacy needs to be improved in order to be competitive in the market.