Wall Charge Behaviors in an AC Microplasma Device with Auxiliary Electrode

Summary form only given. Microplasma is the light source for alternating current-plasma display panels (AC-PDP) and the back light unit (BLU) of liquid crystal displays (LCD). As the size of flat panel displays become larger, additional effort is needed in order to improve the microplasma efficiency related to the power consumption. In a previous report, a novel structure with an auxiliary electrode was proposed to improve the microplasma efficiency for the application of plasma displays. However, the exact mechanism of proposed structure remains unknown. Therefore, this work investigates wall charge behaviors for a better understanding of phenomena in a cell of the microplasma device with an auxiliary electrode. The variation of the wall charge between the before and after states of the discharge is represented by the integrated value of the discharge current". Therefore, spatial behaviors of the wall charge can be obtained by above results. In the proposed structure with an auxiliary electrode, it was defined that there were two or three discharge modes as the voltage of the auxiliary electrode varies. Thus, it is expected that each mode has the different wall charge behavior. For each mode, the spatial behavior of the wall charge was investigated through the quantitative analysis of the discharge current. In addition, the tendency of the wall charge behavior was examined in terms of the gas pressure, barrier-rib height and gap distance.