Abstract
This paper shows a new type of flat fluorescent lamps for LCD backlighting, which utilizes xenon dielectric barrier discharges. The lamp is made of two glass plates. The structure is very simple. It has advantages which are ascribed to the structure. It has good luminous characteristics in every lamp size, because the discharge gap is kept at a certain value irrespective of size. Due to the absence of mercury, it operates well at low temperatures. And the authors found that it was characterized with excellent luminance uniformity and good luminance maintenance. Moreover, the authors obtained a high luminous efficacy (27lm/W), by virtue of operating by a pulse wave of voltage. It was found that the efficacy was improved with decreasing the power per cycle, and in the case of the pulse wave, the lamp could be operated below the power of the sine wave operation.
