Fluid simulations of an AC plasma display panel (AC-PDP)

Summary form only given. The AC-PDP is a promising candidate for flat screen applications requiring large surface areas (e.g. high definition television). Important issues for the design of such displays include maximizing luminous efficiency and lifetime, tailoring spectral output for specific phosphors, optimizing electrode geometry, dielectric coatings, and composition of the Penning gas mixture. It would be desirable to have a model which could guide the experimental investigation of new designs. An ideal model would be able to predict the dynamics of charged species, many excited states and photons to predict spectral output in a potentially complex (2-D or even 3-D) geometry, over several discharge cycles. A model which would simultaneously examine geometrical effects and a complete manifold of excited states would not lend itself well to parametric studies. We are in the process of developing a flexible computational tool which can be configured as the requirement for a particular study dictates. The most general form of the model can treat any arbitrary set of time dependent ordinary or partial differential equations in 0-D, 1-D or 2-D. Each cell face can be specified as an interior cell, or symmetry, Diriclet, Neumann, or Robin boundary conditions can be specified, allowing for the study of complicated geometries. The specific model is general with respect to the number of ionic and neutral species which can be included with the transport described by time-dependent reaction-diffusion-convection equations.