Skip to main content

Short note: Plasma display

Short answer

A plasma display uses tiny gas-filled cells between two glass plates with electrode grids. Applying voltage ionizes the gas, emitting UV that excites red, green, or blue phosphors. It provides wide viewing angles and large screens, but consumes more power and risks burn-in.

Write a short note on plasma display.

A plasma display is an emissive flat panel display in which each pixel is a tiny cell filled with an inert gas (neon-xenon mixture) that glows when voltage is applied.

 Glass plate  with vertical conducting ribbons
     |  gas cells (pixels) at the crossings
 Glass plate  with horizontal conducting ribbons

Working

  1. A grid of vertical conductors is on one glass plate and horizontal conductors on the other; the gas lies between them.
  2. To light a pixel, a firing voltage is applied to the horizontal and vertical lines crossing at that point. The gas ionises into plasma and emits ultraviolet light.
  3. The UV light excites a red, green or blue phosphor in the cell, which gives visible light.
  4. A lower sustaining voltage keeps the cell glowing; the pixel is turned off by lowering the voltage. Refreshing keeps the picture.

Advantages: large screens, wide viewing angle, good contrast and brightness, no flicker, thin. Disadvantages: high power use, heating, costly, risk of screen burn-in, lower resolution than LCD.

✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)

All Computer Graphics chapter 1 questions →