| Abstract: | Abstract— It has been well known that the luminous efficiency of PDPs can be improved by increasing the Xe content in the panel. For instance, the efficiency is improved by a factor 1.7 when the Xe content is increased from 3.5% to 30%. The sustain pulse voltage, however, increases from 180 to 230 V by a factor 1.3. It was found that the increase in the sustain pulse voltage can be suppressed by increasing the sustain pulse frequency. The high‐frequency operation further increases the luminous efficiency. If the Xe content is increased from 3.5% to 30% and the drive pulse frequency is increased from 147 to 313 kHz, the luminous efficiency becomes 2.7 times higher and the luminance 4.5 times higher. Furthermore, the increase in the sustain pulse voltage is suppressed 1.1 times, from 180 to 200 V. A mechanism of attaining high efficiency and low‐voltage performance can be considered as follows. A train of pulses is applied during a sustain period. As the sustain pulse frequency is increased, the pulse repetition rate becomes faster and a percentage of the space charge created by the previous pulse remains until the following pulse is applied. Due to the priming effect of these space charge, the discharge current build‐up becomes faster, the width of the discharge current becomes narrower, ion‐heating loss is reduced, and the effective electron temperature is optimized so that Xe atoms are excited more efficiently. The intensity of Xe 147‐nm radiation, dominant in low‐pressure Xe dis‐charges, saturates with respect to electron density due to plasma saturation. This determines the high end of the sustain pulse frequency. |
