Numerical Simulation Of The Discharge Characteristics Of Plasma Flat Panel Displays

Plasma display panel (PDP) is one of the leading technologies for large-area high-brightness flat panel displays. As the size of the discharge cell is very small, it is difficult to measure the physical quantities such as the density and the temperature directly. Computer simulation has become a useful tool to understand the discharge characteristics in the display cell.Among the numerical simulations, fluid model has been used widely. Two fluid models are presented in this paper: LFA(local field approximation) and EME(elctron mean energy). LFA model does not take into account the electron energy redistribution due to thermal conduction and convection and assumes the transport and rate coefficients are the functions of the reduced field. Recently, non-LFA model, such as EME model, has been used to improve the fluid simulations of gas discharge. In the EME model, the electron energy balance equation is taken into account and the transport coefficients are assumed to be the functions of the electron mean energy.In this paper, a software is programmed to simulate the discharge process of plasma display cell of coplanar-electrode type, the matrix-electrode type and the novel shadow-mask PDP according to the gas discharge mechanism and fluid simulation theory.The simulation results show that both LFA model and EME model can be used to investigate the discharge characteristics of the cell, but the EME model is preferred for its better coincidence with theories and experiments. With non-synchro method, the calculation time of EME model is greatly reduced. The variation with the time of the mean density of all particles, electron temperature and their space distributions in the discharge cell are calculated in this paper.The characteristics of shadow-mask PDP are compared with those of coplanar-electrode PDP by EME model. The result shows that the shadow-mask PDP has many advantages, such as the greater mean value of the particle densities, the higher response speed and discharge efficiency. Moreover, how to optimize the cell structure of shadow-mask PDP has been investigated. The influence of the height,width and the shape of the metal barrier is calculated in this paper. The simulation results show that the shape of the barrier boundary has great influence on discharge efficiency. The variation of electron temperature with gas pressure is also investigated and its result is coincident with the recorded data.