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

Abstract

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.