Measurement of wall charge and capacitance variation for a single cell in the AC plasma display panel

Real-time dynamic measurements are performed on a single cell in a standard commercially available large plasma panel. The measurements determine cell response to variations in address pulses, sustain waveforms, or priming from neighboring cells. The wall-charge measurement indicates the internal dielectric surface charge and the capacitance measurement indicates the existence of a plasma in the gas volume. These measurements have shown that neighboring on cells can cause a large wall-charge transfer in off cells that results in reduced write and sustain voltage margins. Direct wall-charge measurements allows use of a simple technique for determination of the voltage transfer curve of the plasma cell which greatly aids device characterization. The capacitance measurement has shown that a plasma exists in commercial MgO panels for 10-15 µs after the discharge-current peak. The capacitance and wall-charge measurements can be combined to give simultaneous real-time results.