One Quarter Million Pixel Arrays of AC Excited Si Microplasma Devices

Summary form only given. Microcavity plasma devices are a promising technology for generating optical emission with high efficiency and brightness within microcavities having volumes of nanoliters or less. Silicon-based microplasma devices are of particular interest because they can be integrated with other Si-based optoelectronic devices and systems and are amenable to mass production by processes that, in general, are well-developed. In this presentation, we report the design and performance of AC-excited Si microplasma arrays comprising as many as 250,000 (500middot500) devices. Each microplasma device has an emitting aperture of (50 mm)² and the active area of 500middot500 arrays is 25 cm². All of the arrays exhibit stable, reproducible behavior with AC(sinusoidal) or bipolar waveform excitation at Ne gas pressures above 500 torr. Operating voltages as low as 300 V of peak pulse potential are observed for a Ne gas pressure of 700 torr and a bipolar pulse excitation frequency of 15 kHz. The electrical characteristics of these arrays are consistently reproducible and the pixel-to-pixel emission is uniform over the entire array to within ~10%. The discharge properties and luminous efficiency of large Si arrays operating in Xe, Ne, or Ar/N₂ gas mixtures will be discussed.