Three-dimensional PIC/MC simulations of the sustain discharge pulse in an ACPDP

Abstract

-The strong discharge pulse between coplanar electrodes in an ACPDP cell is investigated using fully kinetic 3-D simulations. Key phases in the discharge development are identified and thoroughly illustrated with an extensive set of plots. The main effort is focused on the study of the anode charging wave and striations formed above the dielectric surface in the anode area. To elucidate these physical phenomena, we perform a number of specially designed numerical experiments.Keywords -ACPDP, PIC/MC simulation, PDP discharge, striations, cathode fall. IntroductionNumerical simulations based on the hydrodynamic approximation proved to be a very useful tool for studying discharges in a plasma-display-panel (PDP) cell, and currently are widely used. [1][2][3][4] They have provided very valuable information about the time-spatial evolution of the discharge (such as distribution of the electric field, electrons, ions, and excited species in the cell), and allowed us to investigate the dependence of different discharge parameters on the dielectric properties of the walls, electrode structure, gas mixture, etc.; they also gave clues for the development of analytical theories. 5,6 The advantage of a numerical approach is that it allows one to "look" inside the discharge and find relationships between discharge characteristics, which are hard or impossible to extract from experimental data. Moreover, one can even deliberately change the value of any physical parameter in the simulation in order to uncover some "hidden" relationships. All of this helped to form basic concepts and to understand many features of the PDP discharge, and significantly improve its parameters. One should remember, though, that hydrodynamic approximation requires too many assumptions (which do not have a solid theoretical foundation) about the electron distribution function under the conditions of the PDP discharge. Indeed, while the electric field in the PDP cell varies very sharply in space and very fast in time, transport coefficients and rates of excitation and ionization processes used in fluid models were obtained for a uniform and stationary electric field (through independent kinetic zero-dimensional considerations!). So, at most, one should consider fluid simulations, although extremely useful, as giving a qualitative picture of the discharge, rather than quantitative. (Note that recent modifications of fluid codes 3,4,7 which include a separate equation for the electron energy are capable of capturing some non-local discharge features; however, whether or not they produce more accurate quantitative results is still an open question.)The strength of the kinetic approach is that it uses only fundamental data, such as cross-sections of different interactions between all kinds of particles, and probability distribution functions of various particle-wall interactions. The distribution of relevant particles is calculated self-consistently during discharge development at every point in time and space without any apriori assumptions. Th...

Dynamic positive column in long-gap barrier discharges

“…Condition (16) indicates that at the beginning, there is no plasma in the discharge gap, and condition (17) directly follows from condition (14) and the Kirchoff's law (11). We would like to point out that, based on what was said in the previous section, Eqs.…”

“…Replacing the IR with E pc L g and after that taking the time derivative of Eq. (11), one can obtain the equation for the electric field in the positive column,…”

“…The proposed model answers this question and can be used to estimate various parameters of long-gap barrier discharges between opposing plane electrodes. This type of discharges (as well as [6,7,8]) may prove to be a viable alternative to near-surface discharges [9,10,11,12] favored nowadays in Plasma Display Panel industry.…”