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gas-plasma display
Last modified: Thursday, August 30, 2001
A type of thin display screen, called a flat-panel display, used in some older portable computers. A gas-plasma display works by sandwiching neon gas between two plates. Each plate is coated with a conductive print. The print on one plate contains vertical conductive lines and the other plate has horizontal lines. Together, the two plates form a grid. When electric current is passed through a horizontal and vertical line, the gas at the intersection glows, creating a point of light, or pixel. You can think of a gas-plasma display as a collection of very small neon bulbs. Images on gas-plasma displays generally appear as orange objects on top of a black background.
Although gas-plasma displays produce very sharp monochrome images, they require much more power than the more common LCD displays.
