ABSTRACT In this paper, an energy harvesting system with a negative stiffness structure is established, whose main purpose is to achieve good vibration isolation, and at the same time, the system can also achieve the purpose of energy harvesting. In order to analyse the system model, the amplitude–frequency response equations for the displacement, induced voltage and electric power of the system when the system is in the main resonance state are obtained by using the multiscale method, and their amplitude–frequency response curves are plotted. In addition, we obtained the existence conditions for the system to satisfy Smale's horseshoe chaos using the Melnikov function. And the phase diagram and Poincaré mapping of the system were obtained using the fourth-order Runge–Kutta method. Numerical results show that the system has some energy harvesting performance along with vibration isolation. Variations in the parameters of the system affect the resonance frequency band and co-oscillation amplitude of the system as well as the nonlinear characteristics of the system itself.