Low Cost IGBT-Based Single-Sided Plasma Display Panel Driver

Plasma display panel (PDP), has many desirable advantages over other display technologies and at the moment is expected to be the most promising flat panel display [1, 2], Due to the inherent capacitive characteristics between surface discharging electrodes X-Y and between opposed addressing electrodes within the PDP as well (fig. 1); high displacement current occurs during charging and discharging, causing a considerable energy loss [1-4]. Now, if an inductor is connected in series with the panel, then it can be charged and discharged through the inductor. Ideally, this would result in zero power dissipation since the inductor would store all the remaining energy in the panel and regenerate it back again [4], Typically, for this application, the previous circuit arrangement capacitor- inductor is called Energy-Recovery Circuit (ERC). Of course, this remedial strategy also suffers high stress and a high peak current in a real PDP drive. A new low cost full-soft switching approach IGBT-based, fulfilling the requirements for a Plasma Display driver and ERC schema is proposed. Simulation, experimental results based on a 42-inch AC PDP demonstrating the feasibility of such a structure, dynamics and total temperature-based looses [5-7], for an accurate benchmarking will be presented.

I. Introduction

In recent years, the performance of high-power semiconductor devices has improved appreciably. Even for voltage requirements that can be met by using the new high voltage switches, from an economic point of view (70% of the PDP's overall cost lies in the driver), it may still be advantageous to series-connect standard switches at low per-unit prices. In addition, from the point of view of stress that should be handled for the PDP driver (as well for the ERC circuit); multilevel architecture seems attractive alternative topology due to its overall design and its high efficiency [8]. Up to now, derivated-multicell converters have only been studied and operated in the hard switching mode; therefore, the aim of this paper is to show that this converter is feasible in soft switching fashion, low budget and above all, lower temperature than the common topologies nowadays [5]–[8]; all this characteristics in a frame of all the main properties remain unchanged.