US 5,990,619 AGranted

Electrode structures for plasma addressed liquid crystal display devices

AssigneeTektronix, Inc.

InventorsKevin J. Ilcisin, Paul C. Martin, Thomas S. Buzak

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Abstract

A plasma addressed liquid crystal display system (10) includes improved electrode structures (90, 100, 130) that are nonuniform parallel to their surfaces and may also be nonuniform perpendicular to their major surfaces. The nonuniformities include surface nonuniformities (92, 94), bulk nonuniformities (108, 110, 112, 112), and geometric nonuniformities (132, 134). Electrodes having such nonuniformities provide localized sites of preferential and nonpreferential surface and bulk properties of the electrodes, which, in turn, provide improved and locally tailored plasma discharge characteristics. PALC displays having the nonuniform electrodes have improved quality because of reduced firing voltages in one plasma channel region compared to another, reduced sputtering damage, reduced total current between electrodes, decreased discharge initiation time, and decreased ionized gas decay time.

Claims19

Dependent claims

In a plasma addressed liquid crystal display apparatus, including a data element, an addressing structure including an ionizable gaseous medium, a data element that stores a data signal, and at least first and second electrode structures each having dimensions that extend in mutually orthogonal X, Y, and Z directions, wherein a potential difference between the first and second electrode structures ionizes the ionizable gaseous medium to provide an interruptible electrical connection between the data element and at least one of the first and second electrode structures to address the data element, an improved electrode structure comprising:

at least one of the first and second electrode structures having at least one of a surface nonuniformity, a bulk nonuniformity, and a geometric nonuniformity;
the surface nonuniformity extending in the X and Y directions on a region of a major surface of at least one of the first and second electrode structures;
the bulk nonuniformity extending in the X, Y, and Z directions within a region of a volume of at least one of the first and second electrode structures;
and
the geometric nonuniformity substantially varying at least one of X, Y, and Z dimensions of at least one of the first and second electrode structures.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.