Heat dissipating housing for a circuit component

Claim 1

A heat dissipating housing with a circuit component giving off heat in operation, such as a driver chip where the housing consists of at least two parts, namely a bottom tub and a cover having a substantially planar cover surface, a frame-shaped planar portion of this planar cover serving as a bearing surface onto a substantially likewise planar bearing surface of sidewalls of the bottom tub, the bearing surface of the sidwalls lastly being fastened to the frame-shaped planar portion by, for example, welding or soldering, at least parts of an outer surface of the cover consisting entirely of metal, as well as other outer surfaces of the housing, such as outer surfaces of some of the sidewalls and cooled in operation by a fluid cooling medium, at least a part of the dissipated heat being conducted from the circuit component via a stiff heat conducting body and via a good heat conductor element comprising elastic material to the cover, and at least one good heat-conducting spring structure with feather tongues bracing itself in several lateral gaps between the heat conducting body on the one hand and at least two of the sidewalls of the bottom tub on the other hand, namely at least one spring structure each into the two substantially parallel lateral gaps between the heat conducting body on the one hand and two mutually opposite sidewalls on the other hand, in a manner expanding by means of its feather tongues so that the spring structures adhere in each instance by friction forces at the inner surfaces of these sidewalls as well as at the heat conducting body; for example, the housing being a housing for a 200 Mbit/sec light emitting module with optical plug and driver chip as well as with a light emitting diode applied in a secondary housing of the housing where this secondary housing is applied to one of the sidewalls of the bottom tub between the optical plug and the circuit component, characterized in that the element (FE) and the spring structures (WS/WL) including their feather tongues (WL) jointly form a single cohering spring unit (FE/WL/WS) which is produced from a single piece of spring plate with a centerpart (FE) and with resilient, lateral parts (WS) comprising the feature tongues (WL), the good heat conductor cover (W) is connected firmly and heat conductingly with the center part (FE) of the spring unit (FE/WS/WL), and the geometric dimensions, the spring forces and the friction forces of the spring unit (FE/WS/WL) are selected so that, after the cover (W) has been placed on the bottom tub (G, G1), but before the final attachment of the frame-shaped portion of the cover (W) to the bearing surface (TF) of the sidewalls (G1) of the bottom tub (G), the spring unit (FE/WS/WL) forms a centering retention--at least a certain resiliently yielding one--of the cover (W), which makes difficult or prevents a displacement of the cover (W) relative to the sidewalls (G1) of the bottom tub (G).