New Reset Waveform for a Large-Sustain-Gap Structure in an Alternating Current Plasma Display Panel

A new reset waveform for a large-sustain-gap structure in an ac plasma display panel is proposed. In the driving of a large-sustain-gap structure with a conventional ramp reset waveform, we cannot avoid the condition of an address electrode being a cathode, which causes lots of trouble in stabilizing the reset discharge. To resolve these problems, a square pulse instead of the conventional rising-ramp pulse is used. In order to stabilize the strong discharge in which the address electrode becomes a cathode, a priming discharge between the address (anode) and scan (cathode) electrodes is made prior to making a strong discharge between the address (cathode) and scan (anode) electrodes. With this scheme, a minimum address voltage of 60 V when the sustain gaps are 250 and 350 mum, respectively, is obtained. However, the contrast ratio using the square reset pulse is lower than that using the conventional ramp pulse. To improve the contrast ratio, the reset waveforms in each subfield are replaced by selective erase waveforms except for the first subfield. In the case of nonselective reset waveform, the background luminance is 19.4 cd/m², whereas the background luminance of 2.4 cd/m² is obtained with selective reset waveform.