Patent ID: 7429967

Claim:
A plasma display device comprising a plasma display panel and a driving unit that drives the plasma display panel, the plasma display panel having a first substrate on which a plurality of pairs of a first electrode and a second electrode are disposed and a second substrate on which a plurality of third electrodes are disposed, a plurality of discharge cells being formed between the first and second substrates so as to each include a part of each of the first, second, and third electrodes, wherein the driving unit: (a) repeatedly provides, in order for the plasma display panel to display one frame of image, (i) an address period in which a wall charge is accumulated in one or more of the discharge cells by selectively applying pulses to the first and third electrodes, (ii) a sustain period that succeeds the address period and in which the selected discharge cells are discharged by applying a sustain pulse between the first and second electrodes, a polarity of the sustain pulse at the first electrodes with respect to the second electrodes alternating between positive and negative, and (iii) a discharge suspend period in which the discharging of the selected discharge cells is suspended, (b) provides at least one initialization period that succeeds the discharge suspend period and in which an initialize pulse is applied to the first electrodes to initialize the wall charge in the discharge cells, and (c) applies, a voltage between the first and second electrodes in the discharge suspend period, so as to form a wall voltage whose polarity at the first electrodes with respect to the second electrodes is the same as that of the initialize pulse.