Addressing theory and performance enhancements for the independent sustain and address AC plasma display

The Independent Sustain and Address (ISA) AC plasma panel is a flat, flicker-free, gas discharge type of display device. This display technology promises to reduce both the cost of manufacturing and operation of AC plasma displays.The ISA technology uses a vastly different mechanism to change the state of the display pixels than the standard AC plasma technology. This addressing mechanism is an exploitation of some of the natural characteristics associated with the plasma that can form during strong gas discharges. This thesis presents detailed data from experiments that were designed to evaluate and test the effectiveness of this mechanism. Through these experiments, the theory that the addressing methodology is based upon is developed and evaluated.These experiments show that the address margin windows for this technology are very large, minimally two to three times larger than the address margins for the standard XY AC plasma addressing techniques.New capabilities are also described, such as global brightness control for the ISA technology and a technique for increasing the addressing rate. These advances were designed into working prototypes and transferred to industry where there are currently commercial products available based upon these advances. A technique for implementing gray scale using some of these advances is also proposed.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio