A cost-effective and high-efficient plasma display panel driver

A cost-effective driving circuit for plasma display panels is proposed with no individual circuitry and no power supply circuit dedicated for the bias pulse. The proposed driver is designed in such a way to share single power supply for both the sustain pulse and the bias pulse. Furthermore, the proposed driver configures the sustain circuit in such a way that some of circuit components can function for applying the bias pulse voltage to the panel. Due to the semiconductor devices and power supply circuit shared in common as well as simplified structure, the developed driving topology can be designed with fewer circuit components resulting in a cost-effective configuration. In addition, the sustain circuit in the presented driving circuit is configured to eliminate the extra conduction losses caused by the reverse recovery operation of the diode. The energy trapped in the resonant inductors due to the diode reverse-recovery phenomena, which was dissipated in the parasitic circuit resistors in conventional drivers with extra conduction losses and thermal problem, is recovered to the input voltage source and the energy recovery capacitor, in the proposed circuit. Therefore, the sustain circuit of the proposed driver can lead to increased circuit efficiency and lessen current stresses. As a result, the developed driver presented in this paper can feature simpler structure with the fewer number of devices, smaller size, lower cost, and higher efficiency than prior approaches.