The basic discharge characteristics of the coplanar long gap electrodes in an AC PDP were investigated. The luminous efficiency of the 150μm gap coplanar discharge was 3.7 lm/W. The luminous efficiency was decreased drastically when the gap of the coplanar discharge was 500μm. The luminous efficiency of the 500μm gap coplanar discharge was about 4 lm/W when the high frequency pulses were applied to the auxiliary electrode located at the center of two sustain electrode.

Using simple pulse technique, two kinds of cases in alternating current (ac) plasma display panel were investigated. One is the relationship between the wall charge decay and the discharge aging time. The other is the relationship between space charge decay and the application of pulse to the address electrode during sustain period. For the former case, the minimum sustain voltage depended on the priming particles within a short time range (100 s) of afterglow, then suddenly increased as the afterglow time increased. With a long time range (600 s) of afterglow, the minimum sustain voltage depended on the state of the wall charges and gradually increased as the afterglow time increased. From these results, a time scale for the wall charge decay was obtained as a function of the discharge aging time. For latter case, the space charge decay time was 5 s when there are no pulses applied to the address electrode. The space charge decay time was about 4 s due to the application of pulses to the address electrode.Index Terms-Discharge aging, plasma display panel, pulse technique, space charge, wall charge.