JP2006100177A - Flat surface display device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a flat surface display device which can be manufactured inexpensively and the sealing reliability of which can be improved. <P>SOLUTION: Mutual peripheries of a front substrate 2 having a phosphor screen 12 and a back substrate 4 having a large number of electron emitting elements 16 are sealed with a sealing member 6. The sealing member 6 is composed of a frit 6b having a core 6a made of glass. A sealing process can be simplified and the sealing reliability can be improved by using the sealing member 6. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a flat display device that displays an image by, for example, emitting electrons from an electron-emitting device provided on a back substrate and exciting and emitting a phosphor layer provided on the front substrate.

  In recent years, a field emission display (FED), a display device (SED) having a surface conduction electron-emitting device, and the like are known as a flat display device having a flat envelope having a flat panel structure.

  The FED and SED have a vacuum envelope in which the front and back substrates, which are opposed to each other with a predetermined interval through a spacer, are joined to each other by a rectangular frame-shaped side wall, and the inside is evacuated. ing.

  A phosphor layer of three colors and a metal back covering the phosphor layer are formed on the inner surface of the front substrate, and a large number of phosphor layers corresponding to each pixel of the phosphor layer as an electron emission source for exciting and emitting the phosphor layer on the inner surface of the rear substrate. An electron-emitting device is disposed. Further, in order to maintain a high vacuum inside the vacuum envelope, a getter film is formed on the inner surface of the front substrate.

  A voltage several kV higher than the electron-emitting device is applied to the phosphor layer, and the electron beam emitted from each electron-emitting device is accelerated by this electric field. Then, the accelerated electron beam is applied to the corresponding phosphor layer, and the phosphor is excited to emit light to display a color image.

  The peripheral portions of the front substrate and the rear substrate constituting the vacuum envelope are sealed through side walls formed of rectangular frame glass. When sealing the front substrate and the rear substrate, first, a front substrate on which a phosphor layer and a metal back are formed, and a rear substrate on which a large number of electron-emitting devices and side walls are bonded are prepared. The rear substrate and the side wall are bonded using frit glass. And the upper end of a side wall and the peripheral part of a front substrate are sealed using indium in a vacuum atmosphere (for example, refer patent document 1).

As described above, after bonding the side wall to the rear substrate and sealing the front substrate and the upper end of the side wall using indium, the sealing process becomes two steps, and the manufacturing process of the display panel increases. In addition, in order to seal the upper end of the side wall and the front substrate using indium, a base material such as a silver paste for filling indium having a low affinity for glass is required, which is expensive and reliable in sealing. There was a problem of low nature. Furthermore, since indium itself is scarce as a resource and is expensive, it has been a factor in increasing the cost of the apparatus.
JP 2003-068238 A

  An object of the present invention is to provide a flat display device which can be manufactured at low cost and can improve the reliability of sealing.

  In order to achieve the above object, a flat display device of the present invention includes a front substrate, a rear substrate that is disposed opposite to the front substrate, and whose peripheral portions are sealed together, and a plurality of image display elements. The peripheral portions are sealed with a frit having a core.

  According to the above invention, since the peripheral portions of the front substrate and the back substrate are sealed using the frit having a core, the frit having the core is disposed between the peripheral portions and melted in one step. Can be sealed.

  A flat display device according to the present invention includes a glass front substrate, a glass rear substrate disposed opposite to the front substrate and sealed at the periphery thereof, and a plurality of image display elements. And the peripheral edges are sealed by a sealing member in which glass fibers knitted with glass fibers are impregnated with frit glass.

  According to the above invention, since the peripheral parts of the front substrate and the rear substrate made of glass are sealed using a sealing member in which glass fiber is impregnated with frit glass, the sealing step can be performed in one step, The reliability of sealing can be increased.

  Since the flat display device of the present invention has the configuration and operation as described above, it can be manufactured at low cost and the reliability of sealing can be improved.

  Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. First, an SED will be described as an example of a display device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

  As shown in FIGS. 1 to 3, the SED 1 includes a front substrate 2 and a rear substrate 4 each made of a glass plate having a rectangular shape of 1 to 2 [mm]. They are arranged opposite each other with a gap of 0 to 2.0 [mm]. The front substrate 2 and the back substrate 4 are joined to each other via a sealing member 6 to be described later, and constitute a vacuum envelope 10 whose inside is a vacuum.

  A phosphor screen 12 for displaying an image is formed on the inner surface of the front substrate 2. The phosphor screen 12 has a configuration in which red, blue, and green phosphor layers R, G, and B and a light shielding layer 11 are arranged and the phosphor layer is covered with a metal back 14. The phosphor layers R, G, and B are formed in stripes or dots, and the metal back 14 is formed of a metal thin film such as aluminum.

  On the inner surface of the back substrate 4, a number of surface conduction electron-emitting devices 16 that emit an electron beam for exciting and emitting the phosphor layers R, G, and B are provided. These electron-emitting devices 16 are arranged in a plurality of columns and a plurality of rows corresponding to each pixel, and are configured by an electron-emitting unit (not shown) and a pair of device electrodes for applying a voltage to the electron-emitting unit. Further, on the inner surface of the back substrate 4, a large number of wirings 18 for applying a driving voltage to the respective electron-emitting devices 16 are provided in a matrix shape, and end portions thereof are drawn out of the vacuum envelope 10. Yes.

  The front substrate 2 and the rear substrate 4 are degassed and fired in a vacuum atmosphere, and the peripheral portions are sealed together to form a vacuum envelope 10. Prior to sealing, the front substrate 2 and the rear substrate 4 are sealed in the vacuum atmosphere. A getter film is formed on the entire inner surface to maintain a high vacuum after panel formation.

  In the SED 1, when an image is displayed, a voltage is applied between the element electrodes of the electron-emitting device 16 through the wiring 18 to emit an electron beam from an electron-emitting portion of the arbitrary electron-emitting device 16 and the phosphor screen 12. The electron beam is accelerated by the anode voltage applied to the phosphor screen 12 to irradiate the phosphor screen 12. As a result, the desired phosphor layers R, G, and B are excited to emit light and display an image.

Here, the sealing member 6 according to the present embodiment will be described simultaneously with the sealing operation of the front substrate 2 and the rear substrate 4.
When sealing the peripheral portions of the front substrate 2 and the back substrate 4, first, the front substrate 2 on which the phosphor screen 12 and the metal back 14 are formed is prepared, the electron-emitting device 16 and the wiring 18 are formed, and the side wall 6 is formed. And the back substrate 4 to which the spacer 8 is bonded is prepared. Also, a sealing member 6 is prepared in which a frit 6b is provided around a core 6a which is thinner than a gap between the substrates 2 and 4 and has a long and narrow glass rod shape. In the present embodiment, four sealing members 6 in which the core 6a is divided for each side of the substrates 2 and 4 are prepared. Further, these sealing members 6 are preliminarily fired by heating the frit 6b in a range where the filler does not disappear, removing unnecessary gas components.

  Then, four sealing members 6 that have been pre-fired are set on the peripheral edge of the back substrate 4 so as to correspond to the respective sides, and are placed in a vacuum chamber (not shown) together with the front substrate 2, with the sealing member 6 sandwiched therebetween. The front substrate 2 is positioned and opposed to the rear substrate 4. Further, after the vacuum chamber is evacuated, the peripheral portions of the substrates 2 and 4 are heated by a frame-like heater (not shown) to melt the frit 6b of the sealing member 6, and the sealed frit 6b is melted. The peripheral edge of the front substrate 2 is joined to the peripheral edge of the back substrate 4 via the attachment member 6. At this time, adjacent ends of the sealing member 6 divided for each side are connected by the melted frit 6b, and the sealing member 6 is connected so as to be continuous in a frame shape. This state is shown in FIG. Thereby, the display panel 10 provided with the plurality of spacers 8 is manufactured.

  As described above, according to the present embodiment, the peripheral portion of the front substrate 2 and the peripheral portion of the back substrate 4 are sealed using the frit 6b having the core 6a. In comparison, the two substrates 2 and 4 can be sealed by a simple process in which the sealing member 6 is arranged at the peripheral portion and heated and melted, the sealing process can be simplified, and the manufacturing cost of the SED 1 is reduced. it can.

  Here, the frit 6b is configured to wrap the core 6a. However, since the sealing portion is the periphery of the core 6a and the front substrate 2 or the back substrate 4, the frit 6b is disposed only on the upper and lower surfaces of the core 6a. You may do it.

  Compared to conventional sealing methods, it can be sealed with frit instead of using a low melting point metal such as indium, thus reducing the cost of sealing without using relatively rare and expensive indium. it can. In addition, since indium having a low affinity with the front substrate 2 made of a glass material is used as in the conventional case, it is not necessary to pre-fill with an Ag paste as a base material, and the sealing cost can be reduced.

  Further, as in this embodiment, by using frit glass having a high affinity with the front substrate 2 and the back substrate 4 as the sealing material, compared with the case where indium is used as the sealing material, Reliability can be increased, and reliability of sealing strength can also be increased.

  Further, as described above, since the sealing member 6 is preliminarily baked and then disposed between the substrates 2 and 4, the gas component generated from the sealing member 6 by heating at the time of sealing can be almost eliminated. The reliability of sealing can be improved, and the degree of vacuum after sealing as a panel can be maintained high.

Note that the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiment as it is, and can be embodied by modifying the constituent elements without departing from the scope of the invention in the implementation stage. Various inventions can be formed by appropriately combining a plurality of constituent elements disclosed in the above-described embodiments. For example, you may delete some components from all the components shown by embodiment mentioned above. Furthermore,
For example, in the above-described embodiment, the case where the rod-shaped glass is used as the core 6a of the sealing member 6 has been described. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and as illustrated in FIG. A sealing member 20 in which the fiber 21 is impregnated with frit glass may be used. Also in this case, four sealing members 20 are prepared corresponding to the sides of the substrates 2 and 4.

  As described above, by using the sealing member 20 in which the glass fiber 21 is impregnated with the frit glass, the amount of the melted frit glass dripping in the direction of gravity can be reduced, and the frit glass can be efficiently applied to the substrate 2 and the peripheral portion of the substrate 4. The contact can be made well, and the reliability of the sealing can be improved and at the same time the reliability of the sealing strength can be improved.

  In addition, the diameter of the glass fiber 21 is set to be slightly larger than the appropriate gap between the substrates 2 and 4, and the glass fiber 21 is sandwiched between the substrates 2 and 4 and is crushed when sealed. The gap between them can be maintained at an appropriate value, and the glass fiber 21 can be easily restrained at a predetermined position. Moreover, by doing in this way, sealing strength can be raised more.

  Further, in the above-described embodiment, the case where the core 6a (or the glass fiber 21) of the sealing member 6 is divided so as to correspond to each side of the substrates 2 and 4 is described. You may use the sealing member 6 which connected the edge | side. Moreover, when the sealing member 6 is divided | segmented, it may be made longer than each edge | side of the board | substrates 2 and 4, and you may make it cut | disconnect the excess sealing member 6 after sealing.

  In addition, when manufacturing the sealing member 6 and 20 mentioned above, after manufacturing a long sealing member by extrusion molding etc., manufacture can be made easy by cut | disconnecting to the desired length, and manufacture of sealing member itself. Cost can also be greatly reduced.

1 is an external perspective view showing a vacuum envelope of an SED according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional perspective view of the vacuum envelope of FIG. 1 cut along line II-II. The partial expanded sectional view which expands and shows the cross section of FIG. 2 partially. The fragmentary perspective view which shows the modification of a sealing member.

Explanation of symbols

  DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... SED, 2 ... Front substrate, 4 ... Back substrate, 6 and 20 ... Sealing member, 6a ... Core, 6b ... Frit, 8 ... Spacer, 10 ... Vacuum envelope, 12 ... Phosphor screen, 14 ... Metal Back, 16 ... electron-emitting device, 18 ... wiring, 21 ... glass fiber.

Claims (11)

A front substrate, a rear substrate that is disposed opposite to the front substrate, and whose peripheral portions are sealed to each other, and a plurality of image display elements,
The flat display device, wherein the peripheral portions are sealed with a frit having a core.   The flat display device according to claim 1, wherein the core is made of glass.   2. The flat display device according to claim 1, wherein the core is formed of glass fiber knitted with glass fiber. The peripheral portion has a rectangular shape,
The flat display device according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the core is divided for each side of the peripheral portion.   The flat display device according to claim 1, wherein an interval between the peripheral portions is 1 [mm] or more.   The flat display according to any one of claims 1 to 5, wherein the frit having the core is disposed between the peripheral portions after degassing by pre-baking. apparatus. A glass front substrate, a glass rear substrate that is disposed opposite to the front substrate, and whose peripheral portions are sealed to each other, and a plurality of image display elements,
The flat panel display device characterized in that the peripheral portions are sealed by a sealing member in which glass fiber knitted glass fiber is impregnated with frit glass.   8. The flat display device according to claim 7, wherein the glass fiber has a diameter larger than a distance between the peripheral portions, and is elastically deformed to the distance by pressing. The peripheral portion has a rectangular shape,
9. The flat display device according to claim 8, wherein the glass fiber is divided for each side of the peripheral edge.   The flat display device according to claim 7, wherein an interval between the peripheral portions is 1 [mm] or more.   The glass fiber impregnated with the frit glass is disposed between the peripheral edges after degassing by pre-baking, and the glass fiber impregnated with the frit glass according to any one of claims 7 to 10. Flat display device.

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