A major goal in plasma display panel technology is to reduce power consumption and increase efficiency. A candidate method to accomplish this goal is to increase the Xe content in discharge gases. However, this method has the weak point of increasing discharge voltages. High purity MgO powders made by the self-reaction method are adopted to overcome this disadvantage. From scanning electron microscope analysis, particles of the powders were observed to have very sharp edges, and the impurity content is very low according to inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry analysis. Moreover, the powders show a very high photo-induced electron emission and exo-electron emission, and have a very low concentration of oxygen vacancies by cathodoluminescence. Finally, the discharge voltage of high purity MgO powder-adopted films is reduced by about 34% compared to that of conventional films. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.