(A) simple current-fed energy recovery circuit with zero voltage switching and zero current switching for plasma display panel (PDP)

Abstract

The plasma display panel (PDP) had been invented by Prof. Bitzer and Prof. Slottow at the University of Illinois in 1946. This PDP has many good features as large screen size, wide viewing angle, long life, high contrast ratio, thinness and etc. Therefore, the PDP is expected to be one of the most promising digital displays of next generation. The PDP consists of three electrodes as X, Y, and address covered with a dielectric layer, so, it is considered as an intrinsic capacitance $C_p$ between two electrodes, each other. Therefore, while we are watching the PDP, the high voltage and high frequency sustaining pulse are applied to two electrodes in PDP. These results in an excessive surge displacement current and subsequent considerable energy loss for each cycle, EMI noise and increase the surge current ratings of power switches. To overcome these serious problems, Energy Recovery Circuit (ERC) is essential to driving the PDP. Then, many ERC have been proposed. However, they still have many drawbacks such as an abnormal energy recovery, bulky system, poor efficiency, unsuitability other driving method, or EMI problems. In this paper, to solve these drawbacks of the several prior energy recovery circuits, a new energy recovery circuit with current fed type is proposed. The proposed circuit builds up the inductor current before inverting the polarity of the panel. As a result, the main power switches are turned on under zero voltage condition and the auxiliary switches are turned off under zero current condition. In addition, the proposed circuit shows high efficiency and EMI noise resulting from no surge current. Since the transient time can be shortened, PDP can be driven in high frequency to obtain high luminance efficiency.