New high-performance energy-recovery driver system and high-efficiency power conversion circuits for plasma display panel

Abstract

The electronic display devices play an important role as an information display for a man-to-machine interface. With the rapid progress in the information industry, there has been a continuous increase in the demand for new electronic display devices with a large size, high resolution, and high information capacity. Among many hitherto developed display devices, an Alternating Current Plasma Display Panel (AC PDP), which features its large screen size, wide viewing angle, thinness, long life, and high contrast, has many desirable advantages over the other competing flat panel displays and is expected to be one of the most promising digital displays of the next generation. A PDP consists of scanning (Y) and sustaining (X) electrodes covered with a dielectric layer, which produces an intrinsic capacitance Cp between these two electrodes inherently. Therefore, when applying high voltage and high frequency sustaining pulses to these electrodes without an energy recovery circuit, an excessive surge displacement current and subsequent considerable energy loss for each cycle are generated during charging or discharging transients. Furthermore, this surge current will give rise to EMI noises and increase the surge current ratings of power switches. To relieve these problems, several prior approaches to relieve these problems have been proposed. Although they can recover most of the energy stored in Cp, they still have several serious drawbacks such as a poor energy recovery capability, complex structure, bulky system, high cost of production, considerable heat generation, large circulating current, poor efficiency, low performance, or EMI problem, which might make it difficult to produce PDP TV on a commercial scale. To overcome these drawbacks of the several prior energy recovery circuits, six new energy recovery display drivers are proposed in the first half section of this dissertation. First, a new SR type IGBT based cost-effective ERC for a PDP is proposed...