Thermal control is an essential issue for the safety and endurance of the drive battery pack of electric vehicles. A main parameter for the heat flow from the battery elements to the cooling system (e.g. cooling channels) is the thermal resistance in the gap between the battery element and the housing. Current solutions for improving heat transfer are based on thermal paste fillings in the gap. Those “gap fillers” feature typically thermal conductivities of 2-4W/m/K. Adjustment of gap thickness variations is done by viscous flow. Those gap filler pastes lead, however, to increased weight and costs and to difficulties during assembly or disassembly of the battery pack. Therefore, an alternative approach was investigated – the combination of metal structures (like pins, wire structures, corrugated sheets or expanded metal) with gap filler pastes. In this case the metal structure has to show the same flexibility regarding the gap thickness as the paste. The significantly higher intrinsic thermal conductivity of the metal structures can offer higher freedom for the paste optimisation regarding assembly. One example is the combination of metal structures with injectable pastes of lower thermal conductivity. In the presented work the thermal behaviour of metal structures embedded in gap filler paste was simulated by means of FEM-calculations. For this, typical detail elements of such structures were identified and investigated regarding their influence on thermal transport. Special attention was given the influence of the heat transfer coefficient between paste and metal. The FEM-simulations showed that this coefficient dominates the metal structures’ efficiency. Therefore, in order to improve thermal flow the embedded metal structures should feature: a) a large portion of metal oriented no less than 30° from the target thermal flow direction, b) small interface areas transverse to the target flow direction, c) large interface areas parallel to the target flow direction.