**3. Decreasing the platform thermal resistance**

As mentioned before, the performance of μTEG devices depends on the temperature difference 'seen' by the thermocouples. Therefore, minimizing thermal resistances in series with those elements would improve the performance of the device. In this section, such improvement is demonstrated by decreasing the thermal resistance between the suspended platform and the ambient, usually the cold part, by favoring the heat flow locally. Two methods have been used to increase such heat exchange: (i) by forcing heat convection onto the platform and (ii) by contacting it with a cold mass. The promising results obtained from the experiments described in the next two subsections call for optimizing this effect through the development of a procedure to integrate a heat exchanging structure, which will be shown in section 4.
