Abstract: A failure diagnosis method for an inverter circuit, which easily performs failure diagnosis of a FET of the inverter circuit without delay includes comparing a motor terminal voltage corresponding to each phase of the inverter circuit including semiconductor switching devices (FETs) to drive a motor, with a threshold voltage by comparators as voltage comparison circuitry. At this time, the threshold voltage is changed according to a high-side FET and a low-side FET on which failure diagnosis is to be performed. Subsequently, by a digital output from the comparator, whether there is a short circuit of each FET of the motor terminal voltage is determined.

Abstract: In the present invention, a method for removing an organic resin material layer reduces residual substances upon removing an ion-implanted organic resin material layer. Inorganic contaminants adhered to the surface of organic resin material layer during ion-implantation are removed by etching, and thereafter, the layer is decomposed and removed by plasma irradiation of the organic resin material layer. An alkaline etchant is used for etching off inorganic contaminants.

Abstract: A method for removing a resist layer, in which high doses of ions have been implanted, by etching in a first step and a second step performed sequentially. In the first step, a carbonized region produced in the resist layer due to the high dose ion implantation is etched by applying plasma using hydrogen as a reactive gas at a temperature lower than a softening point of the resist layer. In the second step, a lower region, left after firstly etching the upper region, of the resist layer is etched by a conventional method such as a downstream ashing method or a wet stripping method.

Abstract: An acoustic emission is detected by a pickup, and its output is converted by a A/D converter into a digital signal, which is provided to a fast Fourier transform processor. The fast Fourier transform processor comprises a cascade connection of a plurality of operation stages, each composed of first and second input memories, a third memory having stored therein a rotation vector and an arithmetic unit for performing a Butterfly operation through using the pipelined architecture. In each stage one of the first and second input memories and the third memory are read out and the Butterfly operation is carried out on the pipelined basis. The operation result is written into that one of the first and second input memories of the next operation stage which has not been read out; thus all the operation stages perform a pipelined operation as a whole. The power of a spectrum obtained as the operation result of the last operation stage is calculated, obtaining a signal corresponding to the acoustic emission.