A review of vibrational energy harvesters underpinned by a flexible snap-through buckling beam

Energy Harvesting (EH) is becoming mandatory in autonoumus measurement systems. EH encompasses all of the technologies and processes aimed at scavenging energy from alternative sources and, in particular, unused energy dispersed in the environment. In particular, the application to power directly or prolong the battery longevity of electronic devices (e.g., sensor nodes in a wireless sensors network or wearable sensors) has come to be recognized as very promising, even more so when the devices are installed in hazardous zones, embedded in infrastructure, or where the mains power is unavailable. Recently, it has also been acknowledged that the lack of self-powered devices and the limited life time of batteries represent the main barriers to the diffusion of the Internet of Things (IoT) [1] and to other measurement related applications.