DRIVING METHOD AND DEVICE FOR MULTIPLE ELECTRON SOURCE AND IMAGE FORMING DEVICE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent the degradation of the characteristics and the failure of an electron source with great certainty in the driving device of a multiple electron source in which surface conduction type electron emitting elements are wired in a simple matrix and also to achieve stable electron emission from the electron source. SOLUTION: In the constitution of a system driving a display panel 101 having a multiple electron source in which a plurality of electron emitting elements are connected with a plurality of row and column wirings in a matrix, a line selecting circuit 102 selects one row wiring out of a plurality of row wirings and aplies selection voltage to the wiring. A V/I converting circuit 108 applies a driving signal to each of a plurality of column wirings in order to drive electron emitting elements connected to the selected row wiring with a constant current in synchronization with the selection of the row wiring. A limit value setting circuit 110 and a voltage limiting circuit 109 control voltages to be applied to each element in a constant drive to a limit value set for every column-direction wiring.