Calculated characteristics of radio-frequency plasma display panel cells including the influence of xenon metastables

Although alternating-current plasma display panels (ac PDPs) are now produced by several companies, improvements are still necessary. In particular, the overall efficiency of the discharge in the standard configuration is low, on the order of 1 lm/W i.e., about 0.5% of the power dissipated in the discharge is transformed into useful visible photons. One way to substantially improve the efficiency of PDPs is to use radio-frequency (rf) excitation because, when compared to ac PDPs, less of the electrical energy input is dissipated by ions in the sheath and relatively more power is deposited in excitation of the xenon, which produces the ultraviolet photons used to excite the phosphors. In this article, we show calculated discharge characteristics for typical rf PDP conditions and pay particular attention to the role of the xenon metastable atoms in the ionization balance. Our discussion is limited to the sustaining regime, the "on-state," of a PDP cell. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.