Letters for flat-panel displays

From the very early stages of color picture tubes, display technologies have been intimately linked with vacuum or contamination issues and with the ''natural'' solution to these problems-getters. Even today, with the advent of the new flat-panel technologies, getters still play a crucial role in solution of the main technical issues on the tray to commercial exploitation of such new displays: packaging. reliability and lifetime. In general, the degradation of vacuum or the impurity, buildup in the internal atmosphere of sealed-off devices can deteriorate the performances of the devices themselves and, in the worst cases, lead to a premature failure with respect to the expected lifetime. Moreover; the production steps of flat-panel displays (FPDs) often include a long baking and exhaust process to minimize the impurity content prior to the final sealing, which dramatically increases the,manufacturing costs up to a level that might be incompatible with mass production requirements. These problems can be tackled and solved by the introduction of a specific getter device that can permanently remove the undesirable species by the formation of irreversible chemical bonds. In this paper, we will focus on long-studied FPD technologies such as vacuum-fluorescent displays, field-emission displays, and plasma display panels, showing how proper getter solutions based on special metal alloys can increase their life time and reliability and, in particular cases, also improve the manufacturing process conditions.