The ThermoLife® Energy Corp. (USA, Californa) imported technology from the former D.T.S. (Germany) to fabricate thermoelectric microgenerators [15]. This company reported the ability to produce 30 μW - corresponding to 3 V, 10 μA - from temperature gradients of 5 K in an area less than 1 cm2. Stordeur and Stark were one of the first to fabricate thermoelectric microgenerators in flexible membranes [16].
New developments also took place at TU-Dresden in order to use flexible membranes to fabricate thermoelectric devices to provide autonomous energy sources for application in microsystems [17]. In this case, the electrodeposition and photolithography techniques were employed for fabricating the thermoelectric devices with thin-films of n- and p-types. However, these devices have the drawback to produce voltages of only 250 mV with temperature differences of 30 K.
To finish, it must be told that the works developed by Gao Min [18], Völklein [19] and Jacquot [20] are important contributions in the modelling field, and these models of cooling microdevices still are references in the thermoelectric area.
1.3