Minoru Kanbara

Development of Yttrium-Dihydride Film for Use in Cold Cathode Lamps

In this paper, we examine the research and discovery of a highly efficient electrode material which we called yttrium-dihydride. This material is effective in a cold cathode lamp which is illuminant. The composition of crystal yttrium-dihydride (YHx) film was compared from the optical reflectivity. A cold cathode lamp with a tube of 63 mm length and an outside diameter of 2.6 mm was fabricated for the experiment, and the glow-discharge voltage was measured to evaluate the performance of the electrode using the YHx film. The lamp current was set at 5 mA for the measurement. The lamp voltage in the nickel electrode for the reference lamp was 220 V. The lamp voltage in the YHx electrode was 169 V. The yttrium-dihydride is revealed to be a more highly emission efficient material. In addition, the lamp voltage remained constant for more than 7,500 h, thus demonstrating that this material is extremely stable.