In a plasma display panel (hereinafter referred to as a PDP) with an alternate current (AC) discharging type, AC surface discharge PDPs have been dominating. Such a PDP has a front plate and a back plate that are made of a glass substrate. Scan electrodes and sustain electrodes, which are responsible for surface discharge, are disposed on the front plate, and data electrodes are disposed on the back plate. The two plates are oppositely disposed so that the electrodes disposed on each plate forms a grid pattern, and sealed at the peripheries with a sealing material, such as glass frit. A sealed clearance formed between the two plates is a discharge space divided into discharge cells by barrier ribs. Each cell has a phosphor layer.
In a PDP structured above, gas discharge generates ultraviolet light, by which phosphors responsible for red (R), green (G), and blue (B) are excited to generate visible light of respective colors.
In driving operation of the PDP, one field is divided into a plurality of sub-fields. Combining the sub-fields to be lit provides the PDP with gradation display. Each sub-field has a reset period, an address period, and a sustain period. To display images on the screen, voltage having a different waveform according to each period is applied to the electrodes. In the reset period, for example, positive pulse voltage is applied to all the scan electrodes to form necessary wall charges on a protective film provided over a dielectric layer covering the scan electrodes and sustain electrodes, and on the phosphor layers. In the address period, the scan electrodes undergo scanning in which negative scanning pulses are sequentially applied to all the scan electrodes. To display images on the screen, positive data pulses are applied to the data electrodes during the scanning. This causes discharge between the scan electrodes and the data electrodes, thereby forming wall charges on the surface of the protective film on the scan electrodes.
In the sustain period following the address period, a voltage adequate for sustaining discharge for a predetermined period is applied between the scan electrodes and the sustain electrodes. The application of voltage generates discharge plasma between the scan electrodes and the sustain electrodes, by which an excited phosphor layer emits light for a period. On the other hand, in the discharge space to which no data pulse is applied during the address period, no discharge occurs and accordingly, neither excitation nor light emitting of the phosphor layers.
In the PDP above, a perceptible discharge delay generated in the address period invites an unstable addressing operation. Increasing the address time so that the addressing operation is satisfactorily carried out inevitably shortens the time for the sustain period, which results in a poor luminescence.
To address the problems above, there has been a suggestion in which a PDP and a driving method capable of minimizing the discharge delay. According to the suggestion, an auxiliary discharge electrode is disposed on the front plate to generate surface auxiliary discharge spreading in a plane near by the front plate. As a result, priming discharge occurs, contributing to minimized discharge delay.
The PDP introduced in the suggestion above, however, has several problems: insufficient reduction of the discharge delay in the address period; insufficient operation margin of the auxiliary discharge; unstable operations influenced by undesired false discharge. In addition, the auxiliary discharge occurs in the surface of the front plate, and therefore an amount of priming particles larger than necessary for priming is fed to an adjacent discharge cell, which has often caused crosstalk.