Characteristics of charged and metastable species in micro-discharges of AC- plasma display panel

The temporal effects of charged and metastable particles in the micro-discharges of an AC plasma display panel (AC-PDP) were investigated under actual driving conditions. The discharge gas used in the 4-in PDP was Neon + 4% Xenon. The discharge characteristics in terms of the time scale related to the space-charge decay, wall charge decay, metastable decay, and charge accumulation were investigated using a pulse technique. For Neon + 4% Xenon gas-mixture discharges of 500 torr, 4 /spl mu/s was related to the time scale of the space-charge decay and wall-charge accumulation time. The minimum sustain voltage started to dramatically increase at 20 /spl mu/s, which was related to the time scale of the metastable particles. Whereas, after 40 /spl mu/s, the minimum sustain voltage slowly increased with a slope of 0.01581, which was related to the inverse of the time scale of the wall charge decay.