High luminous efficacy characteristics of long gap structure AC plasma display panel with self-ignition electrodes

A long gap structure alternating current plasma display panel (ac PDP) with ignition electrodes is suggested, and its luminous characteristics are investigated. The operation voltages of the long gap structure PDP can be reduced with the help of ignition electrodes. Luminance and luminous efficacy are improved compared with those of an ac PDP with electrodes having the conventional short discharge gap. The luminance and luminous efficacy of the suggested structure can be further improved by applying address auxiliary pulses synchronized with the sustain pulses. The detailed current waveform analysis suggests that the application of address auxiliary pulse changes the discharge current ratio between the long gap electrodes to the ignition electrodes. By increasing the address auxiliary pulse voltage to a certain extent, the luminous efficacy increased along with the discharge current ratio. It has been also observed that when the width of the long gap discharge electrode is increased, the dynamic voltage margin increased accordingly.