A new driving waveform to improve dark room contrast ratio in ac plasma display panel

A high dark room contrast ratio is necessary for realizing good image quality in ac plasma display panels (PDP). However, the conventional PDPs have low dark room contrast ratio because the background light mainly results from the reset discharges between the address, scan, and sustain electrodes in every subfield. In this study, a new driving method [improved waveform of contrast ratio (ICR)] is suggested to enhance the dark room contrast ratio. The principle of ICR is that the facing discharges during the reset period occur between the scan and address electrodes instead of surface discharges by applying almost the same voltage waveform as the scan voltage to the sustain electrode after the conventional first subfield. Moreover, the reset discharge occurs only for the cells that experienced sustain discharge in the preceding subfield after the first subfield. The dark room contrast ratio of ICR is improved more than 7/spl times/ as compared to the conventional method.