The Plasma TV Blog

A Plasma TV works because of the unique properties of plasma. When a gas is in a plasma state it is said to be ionized. It has a positive electric charge due to the fact that a number of the negative electrons have broken loose and are moving around freely. The screen of the Plasma TV is made up of thousands of tiny dots called pixels. These pixels are tiny fluorescent lights, normally made up of three colors: red, green and blue which are evenly distributed over the screen. When a video signal is received it triggers a high energy beam of electrons that lights the pixels in the required color pattern to produce the image.

The thing that makes the fluorescent lights work is the plasma. The gases used in the plasma screens are xenon and neon. When these gases are excited by an electronic current passing through it, the negatively charged electrons begin to be drawn to the positively charged protons, and vice versa. There is a mad rush of particles toward each other, and collisions occur. When the particles collide they excite the gas atoms in the plasma. In the case of xenon and neon, the excitement and release of energy causes a release of light photons. The light photons released consist of ultraviolet light which is invisible to the human eye, but the UV light can be used to excite visible light photons producing the image.