The Impact of a Thermal Spreader on the Temperature Distribution in a Plasma Display Panel

Plasma display panels (PDPs) are a leading technology for large size television displays. Screen inefficiencies result in considerable localized heat generation within the PDP and necessitate aggressive thermal management to reduce spatial temperature variations across the screen. In the current study, experimental and numerical techniques were used to investigate the effect of a natural graphite heat spreader on hot spots and the temperature distribution across the screen. A commercial, 42 inch high-definition PDP, retrofitted with natural graphite heat spreaders with in-plane thermal conductivity varying from 140 to 440 W/mK and thicknesses varying from 0.5 mm to 1.4 mm, served as the test vehicle for this study. Infrared thermography was used to obtain a thermal map of the entire screen for different illumination patterns for each spreader configuration. Using a luminance meter, the luminosity of a selected point on the screen has been measured. A three-dimensional numerical model of this typical PDP, including the glass and spreader layers, as well as the chassis electronics, has been developed and the numerically obtained temperature distributions were compared to the experimental data