Peter S. Friedman

Large-area full-color AC plasma display monitor

A large-area, full-color HDTV display having a diagonal of 40 to 60 inches, a video interface, and up to 256 levels of gray scale.

Review of plasma technology: past and future

Plasma display panels (PDPs) have become a major focus in the worlds quest for the direct view, hang-on-the-wall panoramic flat panel display (FPD) monitor. There are more than a dozen large international companies scrambling to be in the picture with a reported world-wide investment to date of around 1 billion dollars over the last few years. In addition, world-wide investments are expected to be several billion dollars over the next five years. PDPs in the past have always held out the promise for large area, high definition applications except the high production costs for high definition video/graphics displays made them impractical for widespread use in industrial, professional, medical and consumer applications.In the present, full color PDPs are becoming affordable for consumer consideration, and the potential for low cost to meet the mass consumer product market is undeniable. Those joining the PDP quest recognize that this potential will be realized within the next five years, and are investing now to be in the big picture. All kinds of specialized and niche market applications which have used, or are now planning to insert PDPs, will directly benefit from the infrastructure and economies of scale that are coming about as a result of he commercial PDP development.

Low-cost large-area high-resolution full-color ac plasma cockpit displays

High brightness, color AC-PDPs with sunlight-readable capability have been demonstrated. Area luminances in excess of 200 fL, luminous efficacies of 1 lm/W, pixel resolution of more than 80 full color groups per inch, and gray scale in excess of 6-bits (64 levels) have been achieved within the past year. These attributes combined with wide angles of view, large size scalability, and most importantly, low cost manufacturability make color AC-PDP technology suitable not only for cockpit, but automotive and other high brightness applications as well.

Color AC plasma displays for high-definition systems

Large size, full color ac plasma displays with high level gray scale have been demonstrated with live TV video images and computer generated graphics. These memory panels employ a double-substrate high resolution barrier structure and are capable of very high speed operation with high luminosity and high contrast at wide viewing angles. At high sustain frequencies, the memory function is superior to that of monochrome AC-PDPs. The display monitors offer full multimedia capability and can be formulated for stereoscopic viewing. A comparison of the leading direct-view high definition display system (HDS) technologies will be made including both single and double substrate AC-PDPs, DC-PDPs, CRTs and TFT-LCDs. The technologies will be compared on the basis of optical, electrical, physical, and cost characteristics. A summary of the status and challenges facing each technology will be presented. Special emphasis will be given to the various approaches being pursued in the development of color AC-PDPs. A status report on the DARPA/Photonics Imaging color AC- PDP HDS program will be presented.