Pulsed excitation of mercury free luminous signs

摘要

This work deals with the operation of neon-xenon and neon-helium-xenon filled signs powered by a pulsed electronic driver. In previous publications [1,2] we report on the selection of xenon based rare gas filling for the operation of new environmentally friendly signs used in publicity lighting. A strong trade off between the light output, expressed in Lux, and the lifetime, up to 20 000 hours, was demonstrated. This paper presents experiments on the performance of these xenon based discharges excited by a compact lab-developed driver. This driver delivers short duration current pulses in the microsecond range with a pulse repetition rate ranging from a few hertz up to 40 kHz. After a short description of the experimental set up, the efficiency of pulsed mercury free signs, the effect of the pulse duration on the positive column kinetics and on the chromatic coordinates are presented.