Plasma displays are wide enough, thin enough and light enough to
hang on the wall as art. And though consumers have historically
been reluctant to dole out the $15,000 to $25,000 it takes to
buy a 127- to 160-centimeter unit, prices are starting to fall.
Fujitsu Hitachi Plasma Display (a joint venture between the two
Japanese giants) recently announced it would begin selling 81-
and 94-centimeter versions for $4,500-not cheap, but not far
from the price of top-of-the-line projection TVs used for home
theater systems.The sources of such high-quality images are
hundreds of thousands of tiny, xenon-gas-filled cells sandwiched
between two layers of glass embedded with rows of electrodes.
Transparent electrodes in the top layer of glass run
perpendicular to address electrodes in the bottom layer. Each
cell is lined with either a red, green or blue phosphor, a
material that glows when exposed to radiation. Application of an
alternating current to two electrodes (via a third auxiliary
electrode) produces an electric