Knowledge structuring for enhancing mechanical energy harvesting (MEH): An in-depth review from 2000 to 2020 using CiteSpace

Abstract Due to swift innovations in mechanical energy harvesting (MEH) during recent years, the findings of MEH research are prolific. The objective of the recent study is to visualise the development trends and the current research status of MEH by conducting a bibliometric analysis using CiteSpace. The original articles published between 2000 and 2020 were collected from the Web of Science core collection (WOSCC) using an advanced keyword search related to MEH. Then, the visualisation networks of author co-authorship, institution co-authorship, and country co-authorship analyses were engendered to categorise the productive authors, institutions, and countries, correspondingly. Furthermore, the core journals, the top research articles and the most significant authors were determined by visualising the journal co-citation, document co-citation and the author co-citation networks, respectively. The keywords co-occurrence analysis was performed to highlight the current hot research topics and new research frontiers, whereas cluster analysis showed the knowledge structure and core subject categories. The investigation explored the major contributing bodies of MEH research at micro, meso and macro levels, the degree of collaboration among them and the knowledge sources of MEH. The main research areas, the current knowledge status and hotspots of MEH were detected for future research. Furthermore, the analysis of grants and collaborating countries reveals that the policy support of People R. China, the United States of America (USA), England and South Korea is significantly favourable to promote the development of MEH research. Finally, the comparison analysis was performed for various modes of energy harvesting and the practical applications of energy harvesting technologies in the real world were highlighted.