Thin Solid Films 518 (2010) 6174–6178

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Thin Solid Films

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / t s f

The effects of hump electrode on the long gap plasma display panel with high
Xe concentration ratio
Jung-Woo Ok a, In-Cheol Song a, Don-Kyu Lee b, Dong-Hyun Kim a, Hae June Lee a,
Ho-Jun Lee a,⁎, Chung-Hoo Park a
a
Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Pusan National University, Busan 609-735, South Korea
b
Department of Electrical Engineering & CIDI, Dong-Eui University, South Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Available online 13 April 2010 It was reported that a plasma display panel with hump electrode in the long gap has improved discharge
characteristics such as luminous efficacy, addressing jitter than long gap electrode structure. In this paper, as
Keywords: an extended study of previous work, we report properties of long gap discharge with hump electrode for
Discharge electrode various Xe concentration ratio in a Ne–Xe binary gas mixture. Due to the hump electrodes between long gap,
Plasma display panel discharge voltage is reduced by 20–30 V and high luminous efficacy is obtained at low voltages in high Xe
Discharge characteristic percentage. For more detailed observation of discharge, ICCD images of infrared light emission from excited
Simulation
Xe in discharge cell are taken. The results show that the discharge is initiated between short gap of hump
Luminous efficacy
electrodes and the main part of the discharge is maintained between long gap electrodes. In addition, 3-
dimensional simulation study shows that hump electrode shape has higher number of excited Xe and Xe2
than the conventional one. This is well correlated with the experimental result showing higher luminance in
the hump structure.
© 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction array [8], and a new design with horizontal facing electrode
structure [9,10] were suggested to achieve the high luminous efficacy
Recently, both the improvement of luminous efficacy and the in PDP. Our group lately reported that long gap electrode configura-
reduction of power consumption become one of the most important tion with hump electrode has improved performances such as low
issues for the alternative current plasma display panels (AC PDPs) [1– discharge voltage, high luminous efficacy, reduced addressing
3]. Optimization of the discharge cell structure is the primarily discharge time lag compared with those of typical long gap PDP. [11].
important key for the improvement of luminous efficacy in PDP
technology. In a typical PDP discharge cell, a three-electrode structure
is commonly employed; a pair of coplanar sustain-electrodes are
located on the front glass, which is covered successively with a thick
dielectric layer and a thin MgO film as a dielectric protective layer, and
an address electrode which is covered with dielectric layer is
orthogonally arranged on the back glass together with barrier ribs
and a phosphor coated layer [1].
In general, most popular approaches for improvement of the
luminous efficacy in AC PDPs are utilizing high Xe gas mixture or long
discharge gap between sustain electrodes [4,5]. Both of these
approaches, however, make the driving voltage high, which some-
times prevents them from being used in the commercial products.
Besides these approaches, other methods also have been tried. For
instances, structures with the longer electrode gap [6] with a third
auxiliary electrode [7], new types of cell arrangements such as a delta

⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hedo@pusan.ac.kr (H.-J. Lee). Fig. 1. The schematic drawing of conventional surface discharge type of an AC PDP.

0040-6090/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tsf.2010.03.174
 J.-W. Ok et al. / Thin Solid Films 518 (2010) 6174–6178 6175

In this paper, the effects of various Xe concentrations in hump

structure are intensively studied. In order to investigate the influence
of Xe contents, test panels were fabricated and discharge character-
istics were compared with the conventional long electrode gap
structure. Performances and properties of the PDP cells were
investigated in terms of luminous efficacy, luminance, temporally
resolved discharge image, and characteristic discharge voltage. Also,
temporal variation of the density of excited species was calculated
using a three-dimensional fluid simulation and compared with the
experimental results.

2. Experiment and simulation method

Figs. 1 and 2 show schematic drawing of conventional AC PDP and

the top view of investigated ITO electrode configuration, respectively.
Fig. 2. The schematic diagram of (a) Long gap (b) Hump.
Fig. 2(a) corresponds to the conventional long gap structure and
Fig. 2(b) to the Hump structure having protruded ignition electrode.
Both conventional and the Hump structure were fabricated in the
same panel to compare the effect of electrode shape more precisely.
Table 1
For the Hump structure, both gap length and width of the ignition
The specification of test panel. electrode is 40 μm. 400 Torr Ne–Xe binary mixture was used and the
ratio of Xe gas was split into 5, 10, 15, and 20%. The cell size of the test
Working gas: Ne + Xe(5–20%) 400 Torr
panel is equivalent to that of a 42 in. panel with extended video graphics
Front glass Rear glass array (XGA) resolution (1366 × 768 × 3 RGB cells). Table 1 shows the
Width of bus elecltrode 70 μm Width of the address electrode 100 μm detailed specification of fabricated test panel. In order to investigate
Thickness of dielectric layer 30 μm Thickness of white back 25 μm more detailed discharge phenomenon, the spatio-temporal evolution of
Electrode gap distance 160 μm Height of the barrier rib 130 μm
summed infrared emission at 823 nm (Xe 6p(1D2) → 6 s(3P2)) and
Height of MgO 5000 Å Height of the phosphor 15 μm
828 nm (Xe 6p(3P0) → 6 s(3P1)) during the discharge was taken by a

Fig. 3. The (a) discharge voltage and (b) luminous efficacy characteristics of electrode Fig. 4. The (a) luminance and (b) power consumption characteristics of electrode
structures under various Xe contents. structures under various Xe contents.
6176 J.-W. Ok et al. / Thin Solid Films 518 (2010) 6174–6178

gated ICCD (Intensified Charge Coupled Device) camera. Measuring
conditions such as ICCD gain, integration time and driving voltage were
the same for all cells. All experiment was done under 10 kHz continuous
sustain pulse.
Temporal variation of charged and excited particles were cal-
culated using a three-dimensional fluid simulation, which consists of
continuity equation,
tion for electrons (LFA) [12–15]. Γi is the flux for the ith species, and
E is the electric field intensity. ε is permittivity and qi is charge of
the species. In the simulation, Ne and Xe were treated as static
background gases at a room temperature. More detailed description of
the simulation model used in this study is found in reference [16].
3. Results and discussion

∂ni 3.1. Experimental results

+ ∇⋅Γi = Si ð1Þ
∂t
Fig. 3(a) shows discharge voltage characteristics of Long gap and
and drift-diffusion approximation for momentum conservation Hump structure as a function of Xe concentration. Firing voltages of
equation. Hump structure are about 30 V lower than those of Long gap structure
for all Xe concentration. Sustain voltage reduction is about 20 V. These
Γi = −Di ∇ni Fμi ni E ð2Þ
lower driving voltage characteristics well demonstrate that short
ignition gap is quite effective despite of its small area. In the Fig. 3(b),
Those equations are coupled with Poisson's equation
luminous efficacy characteristics are shown as a function of driving
∇⋅εE = ∑ qi ni ð3Þ voltage and Xe percentage. The efficacy increases with Xe percentage
i in both structures as expected. The Hump structure shows higher
luminous efficacy for all driving voltages. For the same driving voltage,
Here, ni is the density of the ith particle species which include the efficacy increases by 5–7% at the Hump structure. In addition,
electrons, Ne+, Xe+, Xe+ +
2 , Ne2 , NeXe
+
ions. For the excited species, comparing the luminous efficacy near the sustain voltage, it can be
Xe ( P1), Xe ( P2), Xe2 (Ou ), Xe2 ( Σu ), and Xe2⁎ (1Σ+
⁎ 3 ⁎ 3 ⁎ + ⁎ 3 +
u ), and Xe
⁎⁎ are seen that the efficacy improvement in the Hump structure is more
included. Si, μi, and Di are the source, mobility, and diffusion coefficient prominent. Resulting effective efficacy improvement in the Hump
for the ith species, which are calculated with a local field approxima- structure is from 11% to 19% when the Xe concentration increases

Fig. 5. ICCD images of discharge evolution; (a) Long gap and (b) Hump structure.
 J.-W. Ok et al. / Thin Solid Films 518 (2010) 6174–6178
from 5% to 20%. This result shows that the Hump structure becomes
more effective when the Xe percentage increases. The luminance and
power consumption per pulse as a function of Xe concentration and
driving voltage is shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b). Since the Hump structure
has larger electrode size, it has higher luminance with higher power
consumption. It consumes 7% higher power than the conventional
structure at the same driving voltage. However, power consumption
near the minimum sustain voltage is lowered by 10% in the Hump
structure compared with that of the conventional structure.
In the Fig. 5 (a) and (b), temporal and spatial evolution of infrared
light emission from the excited Xe is shown for the panel with 10% Xe.
Since the experimental conditions for ICCD measurements are
identical, direct comparison of glow pattern for the two panels is
possible. It can be seen that the discharge begins much faster, about
80 ns, for the Hump electrode discharge. At the beginning stage of the
discharge, the glow region is confined near the small ignition
electrode in case of the Hump structure. As expected, this clearly
shows that the discharge starts from the extruded ignition electrode.
As the discharge grows, the location of peak intensity moves from
short gap region to the main electrode area. When the discharge is
fully developed the brightest spot is formed near the center of the
main electrode. This discharge grow pattern indicates that, for the
Hump electrode, the cathode spot is moving and growing toward the
main electrode. On the other hand, for the conventional long gap
structure, the cathode spot is located at the center of the electrode
from the beginning of the discharge and the spot grows without
moving. However, Fig. 5 also show that discharge duration of hump
electrode cell is reduced by approximately 20% compared with that of
long gap electrode. It is due to the larger electrode, higher current and
subsequent larger amount of wall charge accumulation. This suggests
that hump electrode plays non negligible role during the discharge as
well as ignition stage. As a result, the Hump structure has wider
Fig. 6. The number of charged particles (electron, Ne+, and Xe+) in Ne + Xe(8%, 15%) mixture.
6177
emission pattern than conventional structure. The measured ICCD
images well demonstrate the design concept of hump electrode
structure.
3.2. Simulation results
In order to verify the increment of luminous efficacy for Hump
structure, three-dimensional fluid simulation study has been per-
formed. The simulated discharge cell structures are the same as those
shown in Fig. 2. Working gas was Ne–Xe(8%, 15%) mixture.
Particularly, the charged particles (electron, Ne+, Xe+) and excited
species for UV radiation ( Xe⁎(3P1) at 147 nm, Xe2⁎(O+ u ) at 150 nm,
and Xe2⁎ (3Σ+ ⁎ 1 +
u ) and Xe2 ( Σu ) at 173 nm) were investigated [15].
Figs. 6 and 7 show the number of charged particles and Xe excited
species, respectively. In the Hump structure faster discharge ignition is
observed, which shows good agreement for ICCD images in Fig. 5. Again,
this calculation results show that the Hump electrode inserted in main
discharge gap make the discharge ignition faster and ignition voltage
lower. Also, the Hump structure shows larger number of Xe⁎(3P1)
compared with conventional cell. The peak level of Xe⁎(3P1) in the
Hump structure is higher by 5% and that of Xe⁎(3P2) is higher by 2.5%
than those of Long gap structure. The increase in the number of charged
particles and excited species in the Hump structure is more prominent
for the case of 15% Xe panel. These results are qualitatively well agreed
with the experimentally measured luminance characteristics.
4. Conclusion
In order to verify the effectiveness of Hump structure for various
Xe contents (5–20%), test panels were fabricated. The properties of
proposed device were investigated in terms of luminance, luminous
efficacy, ICCD measurement and 3-dimensional fluid simulation. For
6178 J.-W. Ok et al. / Thin Solid Films 518 (2010) 6174–6178
Fig. 7. The number of Xe excited species (Xe⁎(3P1), Xe⁎(3P2), Xe⁎ 3 +
test panel with 20% Xe, the discharge voltage decreased 30 V,
luminance increased 17% and luminous efficacy was increased 19%
in the Hump structure. Through analysis of ICCD images for the spatio-
temporal evolution of infrared emission from excited Xe, it was shown
that the Hump structure has wider emission pattern than conven-
tional structure. In the simulation results, the charged particles and
excited species in the Hump structure were increased. It was well
agreed with experimental results. In summary, our study have shown
that the Hump structure is very effective for realizing high efficiency,
low voltage plasma display panel in high Xe concentration.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the IT R&D program of MKE/KEIT
[KI002179, Development of Eco-friendly 50″ Quadro Full HD PDP
Technology].
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