Cost-effective resonant circuit with fast energy transfer speed for plasma display panels

A simple and cost-effective sustain circuit with energy recovery and injection function is proposed based on reduced number of circuit components and fast energy transfer speed for plasma display panels (PDPs). The proposed driver configures the sustain circuit and the resonant circuit in such a way that the resonant network is energized by the sustain voltage level and the ground level in charging and discharging the panel capacitor, respectively. Due to this structure, the energy transfer through the panel is twice as fast as the conventional drivers biased by half sustain voltage level. This faster energy transfer speed can lead to the increased number of sustain pulses or the increased address lines, which can improve image brightness or display resolution, respectively. Moreover, the over-excited resonant network enables the panel voltage to fully rise up to the sustain voltage and fall down to the ground, despite of unavoidable parasitic resistance on the circuits. This operation insures zerovoltage turn-on switching for all the sustain switches, which yields reduced switching losses in the driver. Furthermore, the resonant circuit of the proposed driver is installed to function for the energy recovery/injection operation at both the Y and the X electrodes. Due to the semiconductor devices shared in common as well as simplified arrangement, the developed structure can be designed with fewer devices than the conventional approaches. As a result, the PDP driver presented in this paper can feature reduced number of switching devices, faster sustain voltage transition, higher brightness, and smaller size.