Influence of gas pressure and applied voltage on Xe excimer radiation from a micro dielectric barrier discharge for plasma display panel

Abstract

We present the influence of gas pressure and applied voltage on Xe excimer radiation from a microdielectric barrier discharge (micro-DBD) in Ne/Xe gas mixture for plasma display panel. Measurements show that the excimer radiation with the 172 nm band lines is strongly observed in the afterglow, and drastically increases with an increase in gas pressure and applied voltage. It is also found that for high gas pressure and low voltage, excimer molecule (Xe2∗) is efficiently produced because of less infrared emission from Xe excited atom. The reaction processes of Xe metastable atom (Xe1s5∗), which is a precursor for Xe2∗, are theoretically analyzed using a one-dimensional fluid model. Increasing gas pressure results in large excimer radiation due to the enhancement of the following three processes, i.e., the conversion process from Xe1s5∗ to Xe2∗, the direct electron impact excitation from ground state to Xe1s5∗, and the collisional de-excitation process from upper level (Xe∗∗) to Xe1s5∗. The simulation analytical result shows that for lower voltage, Xe1s5∗ is efficiently produced due to the increase in the ratio of direct excitation to Xe1s5∗ from ground state and the suppression of the stepwise ionization from Xe1s5∗ by electron collisions. While for high voltage operation of micro-DBD, the recombination process with Xe molecular ion (Xe2+) and electron contributes to the total excimer radiation, which can be responsible for the large excimer radiation observed in experiment.