The trends and geography of nanotechnological research

Abstract

This paper presents a study of trends in nanotechnology, indicating regional development efforts, based on analyses of scientific publications from 17 countries, divided in two sets: seven key countries (USA, France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada and Spain) and ten competitor-countries (Brazil, India, China, Australia, South Africa, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Israel and Mexico), from 1994 to 2004. A search in the Web of Science database was undertaken, utilizing 51 terms selected by experts in nanotechnology. A master dataset with
almost 140,000 registers was created and scientific indicators were produced through data and text mining tools and a competitive intelligence approach. In the key countries, it was possible to discern the quantity of publications from the USA (21,769), followed by Japan (10,883). Within the per-country
analysis, in the case of the USA, for example, the most frequently used terms are “nanoparticulates”, “nanotube”, “quantum dot”, “nanocrystal” and/or “nanostructure”.
China has the best position in the competitor countries. Brazil is the best in the Latin America, and represents 5.7% of the competitor-country publications, with 1066 papers, and “quantum dot” is the most frequently term used for the representative Brazilian universities.