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Tendencies in scientific output on carbon nanotubes and graphene in global centers of excellence for nanotechnology

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Abstract

A change has been taking place in the world of nanotechnologies since 2009, marking the beginning of a new era of end consumer goods related to these new technologies. In this article, our aim is to know the dominant tendencies observed in scientific output on carbon nanotubes at centres and poles from different countries and considered to be at the forefront of nanotechnologies research. We have selected a sample comprised of eight universities and locally coherent concentrations from different geographic areas: Europe, America and Asia. Based on this sample, we have used the Scopus database to analyse scientific output on carbon nanotubes in order to determine if there are significant differences in behaviour. We observe that dynamics of scientific output on nanotubes are similar in the universities and clusters analysed over time although a drop in publications was noted in 2009 in part of the organizations included in the sample. We have seen a large amount of publications on graphene in the last several years, due to the fact that researchers working in the field of carbon nanotubes gradually move towards the study of graphene, explained by the high expectations concerning the use of this element. The results lead us to conclude that advances in knowledge on carbon nanotubes and graphene will make it possible to meet the growing needs of a new and powerful market for products that are progressively including these new elements.

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Notes

  1. “Carbon nanotubes (often named only nanotubes) are graphite sheets rolled up into cylinders with diameters of the order of a few nanometers and up to some millimeters in length with at least one end capped with a hemisphere of the fullerene structure. There are two main types of nanotubes: the single-walled nanotubes (SWCNTs or SWNTs) and the multiwalled nanotubes (MWCNTs or MWNTs), in particular the double-walled nanotubes (DWCNTs or DWNTs). MWCNTs consist of a single sheet of graphite roled in around itself (like a rolled up newspaper) or consist of multiple layers of graphite arranged in concentric cylinders (like a Russian Doll)” (Marx and Barth 2010: 1).

  2. SciVerse Scopus contains 41 million records, 70% with abstracts; nearly 18,000 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide (http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopus/about). See also http://info.scopus.com/why-scopus/academia (accessed July 12, 2011).

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to SPRI and the Basque Government Department of Industry for financially supporting this research under the SAIOTEK programme (NANOCOMP project), which was the framework for our study. We would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their useful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Basque Country, UPV-EHU, Bilbao, Spain

    Goio Etxebarria, Mikel Gomez-Uranga & Jon Barrutia

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  1. Goio Etxebarria
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  2. Mikel Gomez-Uranga
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  3. Jon Barrutia
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Correspondence to Goio Etxebarria.

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Etxebarria, G., Gomez-Uranga, M. & Barrutia, J. Tendencies in scientific output on carbon nanotubes and graphene in global centers of excellence for nanotechnology. Scientometrics 91, 253–268 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0617-9

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