Study of the electric field and wall voltage in a high pressure ac-PDP cell by laser induced fluorescence spectroscopy

The electric field in a surface discharge type ac-PDP cell with He or He/Xe(0.1%) mixture has been measured over a wide range of pressure (5－50 kPa) using laser induced fluorescence detection. The wall voltage was estimated from the measured electric field. The Stark manifolds of triplet atomic helium Rydberg state (2s^3S) with principal quantum numbers (n=8 and 9) have been used to measure the electric field, as the lifetime of 2s^3S is longer than the single atomic helium Rydberg state (2s^1S) in high pressure discharge. Comparison of the Stark manifolds between the n=9 and n=8 shows that the measurement accuracy of electric field can be increased by 10%. The maximum electric field strength during discharge and the wall voltage at the end of pulse decreases with the increase of pressure. The comparison of He and He/Xe(0.1%) discharge at 13 kPa showed that He/Xe gas mixture discharge can accumulate more wall charge on MgO surface and the electric field was somewhat higher than those of pure helium discharge during pulse off period under the same discharge conditions.