The influence of the properties of evaporation source on the discharge characteristics of MgO film

The MgO layer deposited by the electron beam evaporation technique is currently used in alternating current plasma display panels (ac-PDPs) as a protective layer. When electron beam evaporation is used as the deposition method, such properties as the density of the evaporation source affect the properties of the deposited film. Four different kinds of materials as the evaporation source, namely, three types of sintered polycrystalline MgO and one melted polycrystalline MgO were used to investigate the influence that the properties of evaporation source give to the discharge characteristic of the films. We measured the breakdown voltage by the apparatus developed. The experimental results suggest that lower breakdown voltages result when the deposited film has a lower density.