Patent ID: 8148198

Claim:
A method of making a semiconductor module comprising: producing a semiconductor component; providing a sheet having a rolling direction said sheet being made of a material which is selected from the group consisting of copper and aluminum; rolling the sheet in a rolling direction so as to introduce an anisotropic elasticity and a crystallographic preferred orientation into the material of the rolled sheet; making a base plate from the rolled sheet by punching the base plate from the rolled sheet, the base plate having a longitudinal direction and a transverse direction generally orthogonal to the longitudinal direction, wherein the longitudinal direction of the base plate corresponds to the rolling direction; and the transverse direction of the base plate is transverse to the rolling direction; attaching the semiconductor to the base plate; and fastening a heat sink to the base plate using screws at fastening points, on a major surface opposite the semiconductor component, a distance between holes in the base plate at the fastening points for the screws being considerably greater in the transverse direction than in the longitudinal direction and considerably smaller in the rolling direction than in the transverse direction.