Mercury-less Xenon Pulsed Discharge Fluorescent Lamps Using Multi Pairs of Electrodes

INTRODUCTION Recently the interests in environmental issues have become stronger. In the filed of light sources, the efforts to reduce the amount of mercury used for fluorescent lamps and to develop mercury-less fluorescent lamps have become important. The authors have been trying to develop mercury-less fluorescent lamps using xenon pulsed discharge. The disadvantage of low-pressure xenon discharge lamps is the constriction of positive column which reduces efficacy. In order to avoid this constriction and to obtain a diffusive positive column, authors proposed a lamp which has multi-pairs of electrodes[l]. Recently this type of lamps have achieved high efficacy of 90 lm/W and high luminance of 10000 cd/m2. In this paper we report on this new type of mercury-less fluorescent lamps for general lighting.