Energy harvesting for the purpose of powering low power electronic sensor systems has received explosive attention in the last few years. A common device uses the piezoelectric effect for a cantilever beams at resonance to harvest ambient vibration energy. However most of these devices have a rectangular piezoelectric patch covering all or part of the beam. This paper considers the optimum desi...

The pressure influence on the lattice vibration of CaZnF4 has been studied by Raman diffusion up to 17 GPa. Most Raman frequencies increase with increasing pressure. Three singularities in the pressure induced frequency evolution are observed around 1.5 GPa, 10 GPa and 17 GPa. The samples pressurized to 17 GPa or higher do not revert to the ambient pressure phase after being released, the new p...

This paper presents the conception of a Smart Low Power Temperature Sensor which is powered using ambient vibration energy. It is presented the architecture of the conception of the sensor to be implemented. This power system will be the main part of the power stage for a self-powered micro temperature sensor inside a distributed sensor network where accessibility to human being operators is ve...

The structure of an H(2)O monolayer bound to atomically smooth hydroxylated amorphous silica is probed under ambient conditions by near-infrared evanescent-wave cavity ring-down absorption spectroscopy. Employing a miniature monolithic optical resonator, we find sharp (approximately 10 cm(-1)) and polarized (>10:1) vibration-combination bands for surface OH and adsorbed H(2)O, which reveal orde...

With the recent development of optomechanics, the vibration in solids, involving collective motion of trillions of atoms, gradually enters into the realm of quantum control. Here, building on the recent remarkable progress in optical control of motional states of diamonds, we report an experimental demonstration of quantum teleportation from light beams to vibrational states of a macroscopic di...

The paper describes the strategy adopted to assess the structural condition of the tallest historic tower in Mantua (Italy) after the Italian seismic sequence of May–June 2012 and exemplifies the application of health monitoring using (automated) operational modal analysis. The post-earthquake survey (including extensive visual inspection, historic and documentary research, non-destructive (ND)...

The piezoelectric transduction mechanism is a common vibration-to-electric energy harvesting approach. Piezoelectric energy harvesters are typically mounted on a vibrating host structure, whereby alternating voltage output is generated by a dynamic strain field. A design target in this case is to match the natural frequency of the harvester to the ambient excitation frequency for the device to ...