High-speed and low-voltage write addressing of plasma display panels by use of extremely weak discharge

Abstract

Although the priming effect shortens address period and reduces address voltage, it is difficult to use the priming effect for the conventional write addressing method because the ramp reset pulses provide little priming effect. An extremely weak discharge for priming has been incorporated with write addressing method. The extremely weak discharge is generated by priming pulse applied just prior to the scan pulse. In the 4-in-diagonal test panel containing Ne + 10%Xe mixture gas, infrared emission intensity of the discharge is 900 times smaller than that of sustain discharge. Therefore, there is no degradation of dark room contrast ratio. Because the priming discharge generates a very small amount of charges, there is little reduction in the amount of wall charge accumulated during reset period. Namely, increase in address voltage can be avoided. Although the discharge intensity is extremely low, it provides sufficient priming particles for high-speed and low-voltage addressing. When priming pulse voltage is 70 V and width is 10 µs, the address discharge delay is reduced to less than half. When the scan voltage margin is 10 V, the data voltage is reduced to 17 V, which is 20 V lower than that of conventional method.