rus
Issue #5/2021
A. I. Terekhov
Biblio- and Patentometric Analysis of the Development of Nanophotonics: 2000–2020
Biblio- and Patentometric Analysis of the Development of Nanophotonics: 2000–2020
DOI: 10.22184/1993-7296.FRos.2021.15.5.378.394
The article analyzes the development of research, the structure and dynamics of patenting scientific results in the field of nanophotonics in the period 2000–2020. The focus is on the global publication output and the contribution of individual countries and their groups to it, the thematic structure of research, indicators of international scientific cooperation. The internal Russian research landscape is considered, an increase in the role of the geographic “periphery” and universities in its formation is noted. Using the basic directions of nanophotonics as an example, a shift of interest from photonic crystals to metamaterials (both in research and in patenting) is shown. The sources of information are the Science Citation Index Expanded bibliographic database (SCIE) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database.
The article analyzes the development of research, the structure and dynamics of patenting scientific results in the field of nanophotonics in the period 2000–2020. The focus is on the global publication output and the contribution of individual countries and their groups to it, the thematic structure of research, indicators of international scientific cooperation. The internal Russian research landscape is considered, an increase in the role of the geographic “periphery” and universities in its formation is noted. Using the basic directions of nanophotonics as an example, a shift of interest from photonic crystals to metamaterials (both in research and in patenting) is shown. The sources of information are the Science Citation Index Expanded bibliographic database (SCIE) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database.
Теги: data analysis nanophotonics patent scientific publication анализ данных нанофотоника научная публикация патент
Biblio- and Patentometric Analysis of the Development of Nanophotonics: 2000–2020
A. I. Terekhov
FSBIS Central Economics and Mathematics Institute RAS, Moscow, Russia
The article analyzes the development of research, the structure and dynamics of patenting scientific results in the field of nanophotonics in the period 2000–2020. The focus is on the global publication output and the contribution of individual countries and their groups to it, the thematic structure of research, indicators of international scientific cooperation. The internal Russian research landscape is considered, an increase in the role of the geographic “periphery” and universities in its formation is noted. Using the basic directions of nanophotonics as an example, a shift of interest from photonic crystals to metamaterials (both in research and in patenting) is shown. The sources of information are the Science Citation Index Expanded bibliographic database (SCIE) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database.
Keywords: nanophotonics, scientific publication, patent, data analysis
Received on: 05.08.2021
Accepted on: 14.08.2021
Nanophotonics as a front for research related to the interaction of light with matter on the nanoscale appeared in the early 2000s. The growth driver was the new opportunities that are opening up in LEDs and solar panels, biophotonic medical therapy and diagnostics, ultra-secure communications and quantum information processing, as well as in the military sphere, for example, in electronics systems on weapon platforms, stealth technology, etc. [1–3].
Due to the lack of reliable economic data, for assessing the performance and competitive positions of countries in nanophotonics, scientometric indicators can be useful. In particular, information about scientific articles and patents can give an idea of the scientific and technological groundwork for its future innovative applications. Using bibliometric methods, we will study the thematic structure of research in nanophotonics, assess the number and impact of publications produced by their main participants, analyze the structure of international scientific cooperation, and characterize the internal Russian research landscape. The bibliographic database Science Citation Index Expanded (DB SCIE) was selected as the source of information for this. The source of the necessary patent information for the analysis was the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database.
INITIAL DATA
Initial sample – 77984 publications (type: article, review, proceedings paper, letter) for the period 2000–2020 years – was obtained by searching the SCIE database for key terms and their combinations (see Appendix) in the “Title” and “Author’s keywords” fields. Her data were used for macro analysis at the level of countries and their groups. Information on 2986 publications with an address in Russia provided a more detailed study of the domestic Russian research landscape, assessment of the contribution and scientific impact of domestic institutions. 2539 US patents for inventions on basic topics of nanophotonics (“photonic crystals”, “metamaterials”, “plasmonics”) were retrieved from the USPTO database by searching for key terms in the titles and abstracts of patent documents.
RESULTS
The following are the main results of the analysis in accordance with the tasks set.
Thematic structure of research
The thematic profile of the selected array of publications characterizes approximately 150 WoS subject categories, 20 of which have more than 1% contribution. The first five categories are: optics (~34% of publications), applied physics (~32%), materials science, multidisciplinary works (~26%), nanoscience and nanotechnology (~18%), engineering, electrical engineering and electronics (~15%). The dynamics of the thematic structure of research in nanophotonics in terms of WoS subject categories and such basic topics as photonic crystals, metamaterials, and plasmonics [3] is shown in Fig. 1 and 2. Fig. 1 shows the fairly steady contribution of the two leading categories of WoS and the progressive growth of the materials science and nanotechnological components in nanophotonics. As follows from Fig. 2, this, not least, could be facilitated by the rapid growth of interest, especially in recent years, in metamaterials. Due to its importance, a special search query was drawn up to identify biomedical applications of nanophotonics. Of the 2621 publications selected by this query, 26.6% were from the United States, 25.4% from China, and 6.8% from India. Russia, with a 2.2% contribution, is only in 16th place, which means that our country does not specialize in this direction. Interestingly, 13 publications on nanophotonics for 2020 (6 articles and 7 reviews) are related to COVID‑19 issues and are mainly devoted to the use of surface plasmon resonance for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV‑2 coronavirus and drug development. Among the authors are scientists from China, Spain, USA, UK, Brazil and some other countries.
In general, the study of the thematic structure of the publication array (including the combination of subject categories) confirms the interdisciplinary nature of nanophotonics (see [3]).
Key research actors (countries and groups of countries) and their contributions
During the period under review, more than a hundred countries participated in research on nanophotonics, at least minimally. The most significant contribution (over 1% of the total number of publications) was made by 22 countries listed in Table 1. Let us single out from the list of participants three groups of countries comparable in terms of the number of publications: seven industrialized countries (USA, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Canada) – G7; seven Asian countries (China, South Korea, India, Iran, Taiwan, Singapore, Turkey) – conventionally “A‑7” and “Rest of the World”. In the competition of the groups, “A‑7” not only wins, overtaking the rest of the world in 2006 and the G7 group in 2013, but also determines the global dynamics of the growth in the number of publications in recent years (Fig. 3). China, having surpassed the United States in 2010, firmly entrenched itself in the 1st position in the competition among countries; it had enough momentum to surpass the entire G7 group in terms of the number of publications produced in 2018 (Fig. 3). According to Table 1 (1st column), the USA, UK, Canada at the end of the period only retained their positions in the ranking of countries, while Japan, Germany, France, Italy worsened them. On the contrary, by the end of the period, India and Iran rose in the ranking to 3rd and 4th places, respectively, South Korea and Turkey improved their positions, Singapore retained its 15th place and only Taiwan dropped two positions. China’s rapid progress has apparently been fueled by targeted leadership policies and increased funding for science. An important role in nanophotonics was played by the Optical Valley of China (OVC), as well as a targeted program adopted in 2009 to attract scientific talent to the OVC, including from abroad. The general picture of a kind of “offensive” of the East to the West in research on nanophotonics is complemented by the fact that by 2020 the publication contribution of more than 1% was reached by Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Egypt, and Bangladesh, while the contribution of Denmark, Sweden and Israel became lower this level.
The scientific schools in the field of optics and nanostructured materials, created back in the Soviet years, allowed Russia from the very beginning to get involved in research in nanophotonics. The share of her publications in this area for the period 2000–2020 exceeds its share in science as a whole for the SCIE database by 1.5 times. It is consistently included in the Top 10 countries; in the 2020 ranking, Russia was between two members of the G7: Japan and Italy (tab. one). It takes a higher place than in general in such “hot” topics as “photonic crystals” (7th) and “metamaterials” (8th).
The contribution of countries can be assessed not only quantitatively but also qualitatively using citation indicators. At the time of the survey (May 2021), publications from the original sample were cited more than 2.194 million times. Table 1 (column 4) shows the contribution of countries to the total number of citations. The United States is in the lead, followed by China by a large margin. The contribution of China and Russia to the total number of publications (30.8 and 3.8%, respectively) lags behind their contribution to the total number of citations (19.5 and 2.5%, respectively), which is the first signal of the low impact of publications of both countries.
The detail of the picture is provided by the relative citation index (RCI) , which demonstrates the scientific influence of the country. According to Fig. 4, publications produced by China and Russia (with a few exceptions) are cited below the world average, although in recent years both countries have made progress: they have bypassed Japan; China exceeded, and Russia came close to the world average citation level. Against this background, the United States and Germany have been decreasing their influence in terms of RCI in recent years.
Note that for China and Russia, international co-authorship significantly increased the citation rate of publications on nanophotonics. Thus, China’s co-authorship publications were cited on average more often than its stand-alone publications from 1.1 to 3 times, depending on the year of publication; for Russia, this indicator fluctuated from 1.5 to 8.7 times over the years. This circumstance creates additional interest in the study of scientific cooperation between countries in nanophotonics.
International cooperation (co-authorship)
The role of international cooperation in modern science is growing more and more. According to our calculations, the share of internationally co-authored publications on nanophotonics increased from 22.5% in 2007 to 28.3% in 2020. The average number of countries whose scientists were co-authors per publication was 2.2 and 2.4, respectively, in the same years, which, in particular, indicates the prevalence of bilateral international partnerships in this area.
The share of internationally co-authored publications in the countries from Table 1 is quite different: from 17.6% for Iran to 70.5% for Sweden. In general, the greatest degree of internationalization of research is characteristic of European countries and Australia, the least – for countries from the “A‑7” (excluding Singapore). At the same time, the average number of partner countries in co-authored publications of different countries varies slightly: in the range of 2.3–2.6 (tab. one). For Russia, there is a gradual transition to multilateral international cooperation: if in 2000 the share of its publications with co-authorship of scientists from three or more countries was about 27%, then in 2007–35, in 2014–37 and in 2020–45%.
Let us briefly analyze the co-authorship network of 22 countries (from Table 1), which lacks only two co-author’s ties: between Israel and Iran, Israel and Turkey. To assess the strength of co-authorship ties for the remaining 229 country pairs, calculate the index of Salton (IS) . Let us further divide the totality of the obtained values using quartiles into four approximately equal parts, which we denote: S1 – the first (or lower – with the smallest IS values), S2 – the second, S3 – the third and, finally, S4 – the fourth (or upper – with the highest IS values). First of all, the groups of the most closely cooperating countries are of interest, so consider the countries with links in S4. The United States has the largest number of such links (18); they are followed by Germany and the UK (11 ties each), France (9), Spain and Switzerland (8 each), Italy and Sweden (7 each), etc. Among Asian countries in S4, China (5) and Singapore (4) have the most links, while India and Iran have none at all. Russia has 6 links in S4: with Germany (IS = 0.091), Australia (0.078), UK (0.051), USA (0.05), Denmark (0.041) and France (0.04). The largest clique in S4 is formed by 7 countries: USA, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.
Russia, together with the USA, Germany, Great Britain and France, forms the maximum clique in S4. If we add links from S3, then in S4 ∪ S3 these five countries, together with Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, make up the largest clique of size 8. Thus, in nanophotonics, Russia is part of a closely cohesive research community with scientists from Europe and the United States; in addition, it has strong co-authorship ties with scientists from Australia. Let us now consider the network in the context of the a priori selected groups of countries: G7, “A‑7” and “Rest of the World” represented by eight representatives from Table 1. According to the distribution of IS indicator values, the most cohesive of them is the G7 group (~90% of its internal links are included in S4 ∪ S3, with 62% in S4); for the “Rest of the World” and the “A‑7” group, the similar figures are: 75 and 29%, 24 and 5%, respectively. The cross-links between the “A‑7” and “Rest of the World” groups with the G7 group are collectively stronger than the internal ties of each of them, which is more pronounced for “A‑7”. Considering that “A‑7” and the “Rest of the World” are weakly connected with each other (~88% of their cross-links are in S2 ∪ S1, and 55% are in S1), this confirms the certain attractiveness of cooperation with a group of industrialized countries. To a greater extent, this is typical for “A‑7”, while for eight representatives of the “Rest of the World” from Table 1, the cross-links with the G7 and their internal links are more or less balanced.
Note that in 2014–2020 (compared to 2007–2013), the weakening of Russia’s co-authorship ties with the four leading Western countries was not observed, regardless of the participation or non-participation of a third party in them. However, compared with 2000–2006, these ties have noticeably weakened.
Important Institutional Research Participants: Worldwide and Russia
The global research landscape in nanophotonics is determined by large national scientific and organizational structures, universities and, to a much lesser extent, the corporate sector. Among the first, for example: Chinese Academy of Sciences (4.8%; 15.7%); National Center for Scientific Research of France, CNRS (3.8%; 73.8%); Russian Academy of Sciences, RAS (2.2%; 57.5); US Department of Energy (1.7%; 8.6%); National Research Council of Italy (1.3%; 38.6%); Max Planck Society (Germany) (1.1%; 17.4%); Spanish National Research Council (0.9%; 30.4%); Agency for Science, Technology and Research A*STAR (Singapore) (0.8%; 31.6%); US Department of Defense (0.7%; 3.6%), etc. In some countries (France, Russia), the contribution of these structures to the national publication output is very significant, which indicates a high degree of centralization of research. Nevertheless, universities are the main producers of scientific knowledge in the field of nanophotonics in the world and in most countries. So, in the first world twenty in terms of the number of publications produced, the United States is represented by the University of California System (1573 publications; 1st place), University of Texas System (773; 8th), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (663; 17th), Stanford University (607; 20th); China – Southeast University (1082; 4th), Nanjing University (918; 5th), Zhejiang University (882; 6th), University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (747; 9th), Huazhong University of Science and Technology (740; 10th), University of Electronic Science and Technology (707; 11th), Harbin University of Technology (687; 12th); Tsinghua University (677; 13th), Peking University (674; 14th), Tianjin University (625; 19th); Singapore – Nanyang Technological University (1111; 3rd), National University of Singapore (669; 15th); India – Indian Institute of Technology System (1117; 2nd); France – University Paris Sacklay (775; 7th); Denmark – Technical University of Denmark (663; 16th); Taiwan – National Taiwan University (631; 18th). The above list is dominated by universities from Asia.
However, scientific impact can be related not only to the number of published works, but also to their quality, often measured by citation. In this respect, smaller universities can have a noticeable influence. For example, of the 470 nanophotonics publications at Imperial College London, 90 and 14 were included in the Top 10% and Top 1%, respectively, of the highly cited publications segments. For the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), a similar ratio was 382, 72, and 10 publications, and for the Russian ITMO University – 457, 71 and 11 publications, respectively. As a rule, such universities are actively involved in international cooperation: for example, the share of internationally co-authored publications of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Imperial College London and ITMO University was 57, 66 and 80%, respectively.
The participation of representatives of the corporate sector in them can indicate the applied orientation of research. In nanophotonics, these are such giants of the ICT industry as: Nippon Telegraph Telephone Corporation (Japan) – 242 publications; Samsung Group (South Korea) – 126; Thales Group (France) – 108; International Business Machines IBM (USA) – 107; Hewlett-Packard (USA) – 42 publications. This also includes companies with less publication contribution, for example, American: Omega Optics Inc (optical sensors, biosensors, optical communications), Lockheed Martin Corporation (aircraft industry, aerospace engineering, shipbuilding), PFIZER (biopharmaceuticals), SensorMetrix Inc (metamaterials, detection systems), etc.; Chinese fiber optic companies from OVC: Yangtze Optical Fiber & Cable Co. Ltd, Wuhan Research Institute of Post & Telecommunications Co. Ltd. In general, the corporate sector in the period under review accounted for about 1.5% of world publications. In the publication output of the United States, this share was approximately 2.2%, while China’s – less than 1%. It is interesting that even in the open part, the share of the military research structures of these countries accounted for more publications: approximately 3.6 and 2.3%, respectively.
Let us briefly characterize the Russian research landscape. Table 2 shows a fairly wide geography of Russian studies. Nevertheless, Moscow accounted for about 48% of all Russian publications on nanophotonics. This contrasts strongly with other capitals of the world: for example, the share of Beijing and London in the national publication output is about 22%, Tokyo – 20, Paris – 14, Berlin – 13%. Contribution of three US cities – Boston, Los Angeles and New York – 3.4; 2.4 and 2.3%, respectively. The conditional “Center” – Moscow and St. Petersburg together with the Moscow and Leningrad regions – produced over the entire period 70% of all Russian publications. However, over time, the production of scientific knowledge nevertheless spread, and as a result, the publication contribution of the Center fell from 78 in 2000–2006 to 65% in 2014–2020.
Along with geographic deconcentration, there has also been a decentralization of research. Against the background of the decrease in the contribution of the Russian Academy of Sciences (from 59 to 52% in the compared periods), the “weight” of Russian universities has noticeably increased, and Russian leaders – Moscow State University and ITMO – ranked 21st and 40th place, respectively in the world ranking of universities in terms of the number of publications.
Universities collectively contributed more than RAS to the Top 10% and Top 1% segments of highly cited publications (Table 3). It is characteristic that ITMO, which made the maximum contribution to these elite segments of world publications on nanophotonics, had the highest degree of scientific cooperation (international and domestic): only 7% of all publications was performed by it autonomously. For comparison: at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Imperial College London, the proportion of such publications was 17 and 27%, respectively.
ITMO collaborated with scientists from 39 countries and more than 300 scientific organizations. Its most preferred international partners were Australia (Australian National University, ANU), USA (University of Texas System), UK (University of London). More than 75% of ITMO publications, jointly with ANU, were made by scientists of the International Research Center for Nanophotonics and Metamaterials, created under the leadership of Yu. S. Kivshar (ANU) and P. A. Belova (ITMO), which speaks of the successful implementation of the mega-grant of the Russian government won by them in 2010. Within the country, ITMO actively cooperates with the Russian Academy of Sciences and, first of all, with the A. F. Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute.
The contribution of the domestic corporate sector to the country’s publication output does not yet exceed 1%; only a few small innovative companies took part in the research: New Energy Technologies LLC (Skolkovo; medical equipment, laser technologies, solar energy); NPP “Nanostructured Glass Technology” LLC (Saratov; production of glass micro- and nanostructures for applications in biomedicine and optics); NT-MDT LLC (Zelenograd; scanning probe microscopy); Avesta LLC (Troitsk; lasers and optical systems).
Patenting scientific results
The signal of the transition to the implementation stage can be considered the patenting of scientific results. The dynamics of the issuance of US patents for inventions on three basic topics of nanophotonics is shown in Fig. 5. As in the case of publications, at first, photonic crystals predominated in the thematic structure of inventions, however, then inventive interest shifted in favor of metamaterials and plasmonics. 57% of the total number of patents in these three areas were granted to US patent owners. They are followed by the patent holders from Asian countries: Japan (~13%), South Korea (~7%) and China (~4%). Representatives of Russia were part of the inventive teams in six patents:
“Active photonic crystal waveguide device and method” (patent No. 6674949; issued in 2004.). Inventor from St. Petersburg (Russia) and three from the USA, Canada and France; patent owner – Corning, Inc(USA);
“Plasmonic nanophotonics methods, materials, and apparatuses” (No. 6977767; 2005). An inventor from Dolgoprudny (Russia) and three from the USA; patent owner – Arrowhead Center, Inc (USA);
“Tunable terahertz metamaterial filter” (No. 8958050; 2015). Inventors from St. Petersburg (Russia); patent holder – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (South Korea);
“Self-resonant apparatus for wireless power transmission system” (No. 9330836; 2016). Inventors from St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk and Vsevolozhsk (Russia), as well as South Korea; patent holder – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (South Korea);
“Magnetic resonance imaging machine” (No. 10732237; 2020). Inventors from St. Petersburg (Russia); patent applicant – ITMO University;
“Apparatus and method for controlling laser light propagation direction by using a plurality of nano-antennas” (No. 10831082; 2020). Inventors from Tula, Dolgoprudny and Krasnodar (Russia); patent holder – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (South Korea).
As you can see, the patentable ideas of Russian inventors, not finding interest from Russian high-tech companies, “flow away” abroad. At the same time, according to the forecast of the analytical company ReportLinker (France), the global nanophotonics market (even taking into account the adjustments for the impact of the pandemic) will reach 202 billion dollars by 2027; while the average annual growth rate in the period 2020–2027 will be 37.6% [6].
Conclusion
In recent years, nanophotonics has become a dynamically growing scientific field with a wide range of technological outputs. In the global scientific competition, the transition (since 2012) of the key influence on the research landscape from the group of industrialized countries (G7) to the group of rapidly progressing Asian countries (“A‑7”) is indicative. Against this background, Russia is consistently among the top ten countries in terms of publication output.
An increasing proportion of the world’s nanophotonics research is carried out internationally. At the same time, different countries have their own characteristics: if in the UK, Germany, and the USA, the growth in the total annual production of publications in recent years is fully associated with international cooperation, then in China – mainly with domestic research, and in Russia – with domestic and international research equally.
Domestic research is rather closely integrated with global research: about 53% of all publications and 80% of ITMO publications are internationally co-authored. Russia is part of a cohessive research community with leading Western countries, has strong co-authorship ties with scientists from Australia. In turn, ITMO, thanks to government support, has become a competitive global center for research in the field of nanophotonics. Calculations have shown that international cooperation significantly increases the visibility of Russian publications.
Nanophotonics provides a positive example of the fulfillment of target indicators set for domestic science, for example, by the share of publications in the Web of Science database (2.44% by 2015, according to Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 599 dated 07.05.2012), by the share of articles in co-authorship with foreign scientists (29.6% by 2024, according to Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 377 dated 29.03.2019); the citation rate of Russian publications on nanophotonics has come close to the world average. According to the results of the analysis, one can note a certain deconcentration of research, as well as their decentralization as a result of purposeful scientific policy.
The scientific results of the world’s leading players are increasingly becoming the subject of patenting, behind which are the interests of the corporate sector. A search in the USPTO database, in particular, showed that if at first inventive interest was attracted more by photonic crystals, then in recent years – metamaterials and plasmonics. Unfortunately, Russia is still weakly involved in this “game”.
Application (search term)
Key terms:
nanophotonic*; nanoscale photonic*; nanocarbon photonic*; nanotube* photonic*; graphene* photonic*; nanobiophotonic*; bionanophotonic*; nanooptic*; subwavelength optic*; two-dimensional optic*; flat optic*; nano-optoelectronic*; near-field scanning optical microscopy; NSOM; photonic crystal*; photonic band structure*; negative-index material*; metamaterial*; metasurface*; nanoplasmonic*; plasmonics; surface plasmon*; magnetoplasmon resonance; plasmonic nanostructure*; plasmonic nanoparticle*; plasmonic nanowire*; plasmonic nanomaterial*; plasmonic meta-atom*; superlens*; nanolaser*; small laser*; plasmonic laser*; quantum dot (QD) laser*; photonic nanodevice*; photonic nanojet*; electro-optical switch*; plasmonic sensor*; plasmonic biosensor*; optical nanoantenna*; plasmonic nanoantenna*;
Search fragment (combination of the term “photon*” with nano-terms and the term “DNA” at a distance of 2 lexical steps):
photon* NEAR / 2 (nanostructure* or “metal nanoparticle*” or nanocrystal* or nanowire* or “semiconductor nanodot*” or “quantum* dot*” or “quantum* well*” or DNA);
excluded terms:
acoustic metamaterial* (metasurface*); mechanical metamaterial* (metasurface*); elastic metamaterial* (metasurface*); seismic metamaterial* (metasurface*); phononic metamaterial* (metasurface*).
Author
Terekhov Alexander Ivanovich, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences; e-mail: a. i.terekhov@mail.ru; Leading Researcher, Central Economics and Mathematics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
IDWoS: AAJ‑1693–2021
A. I. Terekhov
FSBIS Central Economics and Mathematics Institute RAS, Moscow, Russia
The article analyzes the development of research, the structure and dynamics of patenting scientific results in the field of nanophotonics in the period 2000–2020. The focus is on the global publication output and the contribution of individual countries and their groups to it, the thematic structure of research, indicators of international scientific cooperation. The internal Russian research landscape is considered, an increase in the role of the geographic “periphery” and universities in its formation is noted. Using the basic directions of nanophotonics as an example, a shift of interest from photonic crystals to metamaterials (both in research and in patenting) is shown. The sources of information are the Science Citation Index Expanded bibliographic database (SCIE) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database.
Keywords: nanophotonics, scientific publication, patent, data analysis
Received on: 05.08.2021
Accepted on: 14.08.2021
Nanophotonics as a front for research related to the interaction of light with matter on the nanoscale appeared in the early 2000s. The growth driver was the new opportunities that are opening up in LEDs and solar panels, biophotonic medical therapy and diagnostics, ultra-secure communications and quantum information processing, as well as in the military sphere, for example, in electronics systems on weapon platforms, stealth technology, etc. [1–3].
Due to the lack of reliable economic data, for assessing the performance and competitive positions of countries in nanophotonics, scientometric indicators can be useful. In particular, information about scientific articles and patents can give an idea of the scientific and technological groundwork for its future innovative applications. Using bibliometric methods, we will study the thematic structure of research in nanophotonics, assess the number and impact of publications produced by their main participants, analyze the structure of international scientific cooperation, and characterize the internal Russian research landscape. The bibliographic database Science Citation Index Expanded (DB SCIE) was selected as the source of information for this. The source of the necessary patent information for the analysis was the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database.
INITIAL DATA
Initial sample – 77984 publications (type: article, review, proceedings paper, letter) for the period 2000–2020 years – was obtained by searching the SCIE database for key terms and their combinations (see Appendix) in the “Title” and “Author’s keywords” fields. Her data were used for macro analysis at the level of countries and their groups. Information on 2986 publications with an address in Russia provided a more detailed study of the domestic Russian research landscape, assessment of the contribution and scientific impact of domestic institutions. 2539 US patents for inventions on basic topics of nanophotonics (“photonic crystals”, “metamaterials”, “plasmonics”) were retrieved from the USPTO database by searching for key terms in the titles and abstracts of patent documents.
RESULTS
The following are the main results of the analysis in accordance with the tasks set.
Thematic structure of research
The thematic profile of the selected array of publications characterizes approximately 150 WoS subject categories, 20 of which have more than 1% contribution. The first five categories are: optics (~34% of publications), applied physics (~32%), materials science, multidisciplinary works (~26%), nanoscience and nanotechnology (~18%), engineering, electrical engineering and electronics (~15%). The dynamics of the thematic structure of research in nanophotonics in terms of WoS subject categories and such basic topics as photonic crystals, metamaterials, and plasmonics [3] is shown in Fig. 1 and 2. Fig. 1 shows the fairly steady contribution of the two leading categories of WoS and the progressive growth of the materials science and nanotechnological components in nanophotonics. As follows from Fig. 2, this, not least, could be facilitated by the rapid growth of interest, especially in recent years, in metamaterials. Due to its importance, a special search query was drawn up to identify biomedical applications of nanophotonics. Of the 2621 publications selected by this query, 26.6% were from the United States, 25.4% from China, and 6.8% from India. Russia, with a 2.2% contribution, is only in 16th place, which means that our country does not specialize in this direction. Interestingly, 13 publications on nanophotonics for 2020 (6 articles and 7 reviews) are related to COVID‑19 issues and are mainly devoted to the use of surface plasmon resonance for the diagnosis of SARS-CoV‑2 coronavirus and drug development. Among the authors are scientists from China, Spain, USA, UK, Brazil and some other countries.
In general, the study of the thematic structure of the publication array (including the combination of subject categories) confirms the interdisciplinary nature of nanophotonics (see [3]).
Key research actors (countries and groups of countries) and their contributions
During the period under review, more than a hundred countries participated in research on nanophotonics, at least minimally. The most significant contribution (over 1% of the total number of publications) was made by 22 countries listed in Table 1. Let us single out from the list of participants three groups of countries comparable in terms of the number of publications: seven industrialized countries (USA, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Canada) – G7; seven Asian countries (China, South Korea, India, Iran, Taiwan, Singapore, Turkey) – conventionally “A‑7” and “Rest of the World”. In the competition of the groups, “A‑7” not only wins, overtaking the rest of the world in 2006 and the G7 group in 2013, but also determines the global dynamics of the growth in the number of publications in recent years (Fig. 3). China, having surpassed the United States in 2010, firmly entrenched itself in the 1st position in the competition among countries; it had enough momentum to surpass the entire G7 group in terms of the number of publications produced in 2018 (Fig. 3). According to Table 1 (1st column), the USA, UK, Canada at the end of the period only retained their positions in the ranking of countries, while Japan, Germany, France, Italy worsened them. On the contrary, by the end of the period, India and Iran rose in the ranking to 3rd and 4th places, respectively, South Korea and Turkey improved their positions, Singapore retained its 15th place and only Taiwan dropped two positions. China’s rapid progress has apparently been fueled by targeted leadership policies and increased funding for science. An important role in nanophotonics was played by the Optical Valley of China (OVC), as well as a targeted program adopted in 2009 to attract scientific talent to the OVC, including from abroad. The general picture of a kind of “offensive” of the East to the West in research on nanophotonics is complemented by the fact that by 2020 the publication contribution of more than 1% was reached by Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Egypt, and Bangladesh, while the contribution of Denmark, Sweden and Israel became lower this level.
The scientific schools in the field of optics and nanostructured materials, created back in the Soviet years, allowed Russia from the very beginning to get involved in research in nanophotonics. The share of her publications in this area for the period 2000–2020 exceeds its share in science as a whole for the SCIE database by 1.5 times. It is consistently included in the Top 10 countries; in the 2020 ranking, Russia was between two members of the G7: Japan and Italy (tab. one). It takes a higher place than in general in such “hot” topics as “photonic crystals” (7th) and “metamaterials” (8th).
The contribution of countries can be assessed not only quantitatively but also qualitatively using citation indicators. At the time of the survey (May 2021), publications from the original sample were cited more than 2.194 million times. Table 1 (column 4) shows the contribution of countries to the total number of citations. The United States is in the lead, followed by China by a large margin. The contribution of China and Russia to the total number of publications (30.8 and 3.8%, respectively) lags behind their contribution to the total number of citations (19.5 and 2.5%, respectively), which is the first signal of the low impact of publications of both countries.
The detail of the picture is provided by the relative citation index (RCI) , which demonstrates the scientific influence of the country. According to Fig. 4, publications produced by China and Russia (with a few exceptions) are cited below the world average, although in recent years both countries have made progress: they have bypassed Japan; China exceeded, and Russia came close to the world average citation level. Against this background, the United States and Germany have been decreasing their influence in terms of RCI in recent years.
Note that for China and Russia, international co-authorship significantly increased the citation rate of publications on nanophotonics. Thus, China’s co-authorship publications were cited on average more often than its stand-alone publications from 1.1 to 3 times, depending on the year of publication; for Russia, this indicator fluctuated from 1.5 to 8.7 times over the years. This circumstance creates additional interest in the study of scientific cooperation between countries in nanophotonics.
International cooperation (co-authorship)
The role of international cooperation in modern science is growing more and more. According to our calculations, the share of internationally co-authored publications on nanophotonics increased from 22.5% in 2007 to 28.3% in 2020. The average number of countries whose scientists were co-authors per publication was 2.2 and 2.4, respectively, in the same years, which, in particular, indicates the prevalence of bilateral international partnerships in this area.
The share of internationally co-authored publications in the countries from Table 1 is quite different: from 17.6% for Iran to 70.5% for Sweden. In general, the greatest degree of internationalization of research is characteristic of European countries and Australia, the least – for countries from the “A‑7” (excluding Singapore). At the same time, the average number of partner countries in co-authored publications of different countries varies slightly: in the range of 2.3–2.6 (tab. one). For Russia, there is a gradual transition to multilateral international cooperation: if in 2000 the share of its publications with co-authorship of scientists from three or more countries was about 27%, then in 2007–35, in 2014–37 and in 2020–45%.
Let us briefly analyze the co-authorship network of 22 countries (from Table 1), which lacks only two co-author’s ties: between Israel and Iran, Israel and Turkey. To assess the strength of co-authorship ties for the remaining 229 country pairs, calculate the index of Salton (IS) . Let us further divide the totality of the obtained values using quartiles into four approximately equal parts, which we denote: S1 – the first (or lower – with the smallest IS values), S2 – the second, S3 – the third and, finally, S4 – the fourth (or upper – with the highest IS values). First of all, the groups of the most closely cooperating countries are of interest, so consider the countries with links in S4. The United States has the largest number of such links (18); they are followed by Germany and the UK (11 ties each), France (9), Spain and Switzerland (8 each), Italy and Sweden (7 each), etc. Among Asian countries in S4, China (5) and Singapore (4) have the most links, while India and Iran have none at all. Russia has 6 links in S4: with Germany (IS = 0.091), Australia (0.078), UK (0.051), USA (0.05), Denmark (0.041) and France (0.04). The largest clique in S4 is formed by 7 countries: USA, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.
Russia, together with the USA, Germany, Great Britain and France, forms the maximum clique in S4. If we add links from S3, then in S4 ∪ S3 these five countries, together with Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, make up the largest clique of size 8. Thus, in nanophotonics, Russia is part of a closely cohesive research community with scientists from Europe and the United States; in addition, it has strong co-authorship ties with scientists from Australia. Let us now consider the network in the context of the a priori selected groups of countries: G7, “A‑7” and “Rest of the World” represented by eight representatives from Table 1. According to the distribution of IS indicator values, the most cohesive of them is the G7 group (~90% of its internal links are included in S4 ∪ S3, with 62% in S4); for the “Rest of the World” and the “A‑7” group, the similar figures are: 75 and 29%, 24 and 5%, respectively. The cross-links between the “A‑7” and “Rest of the World” groups with the G7 group are collectively stronger than the internal ties of each of them, which is more pronounced for “A‑7”. Considering that “A‑7” and the “Rest of the World” are weakly connected with each other (~88% of their cross-links are in S2 ∪ S1, and 55% are in S1), this confirms the certain attractiveness of cooperation with a group of industrialized countries. To a greater extent, this is typical for “A‑7”, while for eight representatives of the “Rest of the World” from Table 1, the cross-links with the G7 and their internal links are more or less balanced.
Note that in 2014–2020 (compared to 2007–2013), the weakening of Russia’s co-authorship ties with the four leading Western countries was not observed, regardless of the participation or non-participation of a third party in them. However, compared with 2000–2006, these ties have noticeably weakened.
Important Institutional Research Participants: Worldwide and Russia
The global research landscape in nanophotonics is determined by large national scientific and organizational structures, universities and, to a much lesser extent, the corporate sector. Among the first, for example: Chinese Academy of Sciences (4.8%; 15.7%); National Center for Scientific Research of France, CNRS (3.8%; 73.8%); Russian Academy of Sciences, RAS (2.2%; 57.5); US Department of Energy (1.7%; 8.6%); National Research Council of Italy (1.3%; 38.6%); Max Planck Society (Germany) (1.1%; 17.4%); Spanish National Research Council (0.9%; 30.4%); Agency for Science, Technology and Research A*STAR (Singapore) (0.8%; 31.6%); US Department of Defense (0.7%; 3.6%), etc. In some countries (France, Russia), the contribution of these structures to the national publication output is very significant, which indicates a high degree of centralization of research. Nevertheless, universities are the main producers of scientific knowledge in the field of nanophotonics in the world and in most countries. So, in the first world twenty in terms of the number of publications produced, the United States is represented by the University of California System (1573 publications; 1st place), University of Texas System (773; 8th), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (663; 17th), Stanford University (607; 20th); China – Southeast University (1082; 4th), Nanjing University (918; 5th), Zhejiang University (882; 6th), University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (747; 9th), Huazhong University of Science and Technology (740; 10th), University of Electronic Science and Technology (707; 11th), Harbin University of Technology (687; 12th); Tsinghua University (677; 13th), Peking University (674; 14th), Tianjin University (625; 19th); Singapore – Nanyang Technological University (1111; 3rd), National University of Singapore (669; 15th); India – Indian Institute of Technology System (1117; 2nd); France – University Paris Sacklay (775; 7th); Denmark – Technical University of Denmark (663; 16th); Taiwan – National Taiwan University (631; 18th). The above list is dominated by universities from Asia.
However, scientific impact can be related not only to the number of published works, but also to their quality, often measured by citation. In this respect, smaller universities can have a noticeable influence. For example, of the 470 nanophotonics publications at Imperial College London, 90 and 14 were included in the Top 10% and Top 1%, respectively, of the highly cited publications segments. For the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), a similar ratio was 382, 72, and 10 publications, and for the Russian ITMO University – 457, 71 and 11 publications, respectively. As a rule, such universities are actively involved in international cooperation: for example, the share of internationally co-authored publications of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Imperial College London and ITMO University was 57, 66 and 80%, respectively.
The participation of representatives of the corporate sector in them can indicate the applied orientation of research. In nanophotonics, these are such giants of the ICT industry as: Nippon Telegraph Telephone Corporation (Japan) – 242 publications; Samsung Group (South Korea) – 126; Thales Group (France) – 108; International Business Machines IBM (USA) – 107; Hewlett-Packard (USA) – 42 publications. This also includes companies with less publication contribution, for example, American: Omega Optics Inc (optical sensors, biosensors, optical communications), Lockheed Martin Corporation (aircraft industry, aerospace engineering, shipbuilding), PFIZER (biopharmaceuticals), SensorMetrix Inc (metamaterials, detection systems), etc.; Chinese fiber optic companies from OVC: Yangtze Optical Fiber & Cable Co. Ltd, Wuhan Research Institute of Post & Telecommunications Co. Ltd. In general, the corporate sector in the period under review accounted for about 1.5% of world publications. In the publication output of the United States, this share was approximately 2.2%, while China’s – less than 1%. It is interesting that even in the open part, the share of the military research structures of these countries accounted for more publications: approximately 3.6 and 2.3%, respectively.
Let us briefly characterize the Russian research landscape. Table 2 shows a fairly wide geography of Russian studies. Nevertheless, Moscow accounted for about 48% of all Russian publications on nanophotonics. This contrasts strongly with other capitals of the world: for example, the share of Beijing and London in the national publication output is about 22%, Tokyo – 20, Paris – 14, Berlin – 13%. Contribution of three US cities – Boston, Los Angeles and New York – 3.4; 2.4 and 2.3%, respectively. The conditional “Center” – Moscow and St. Petersburg together with the Moscow and Leningrad regions – produced over the entire period 70% of all Russian publications. However, over time, the production of scientific knowledge nevertheless spread, and as a result, the publication contribution of the Center fell from 78 in 2000–2006 to 65% in 2014–2020.
Along with geographic deconcentration, there has also been a decentralization of research. Against the background of the decrease in the contribution of the Russian Academy of Sciences (from 59 to 52% in the compared periods), the “weight” of Russian universities has noticeably increased, and Russian leaders – Moscow State University and ITMO – ranked 21st and 40th place, respectively in the world ranking of universities in terms of the number of publications.
Universities collectively contributed more than RAS to the Top 10% and Top 1% segments of highly cited publications (Table 3). It is characteristic that ITMO, which made the maximum contribution to these elite segments of world publications on nanophotonics, had the highest degree of scientific cooperation (international and domestic): only 7% of all publications was performed by it autonomously. For comparison: at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Imperial College London, the proportion of such publications was 17 and 27%, respectively.
ITMO collaborated with scientists from 39 countries and more than 300 scientific organizations. Its most preferred international partners were Australia (Australian National University, ANU), USA (University of Texas System), UK (University of London). More than 75% of ITMO publications, jointly with ANU, were made by scientists of the International Research Center for Nanophotonics and Metamaterials, created under the leadership of Yu. S. Kivshar (ANU) and P. A. Belova (ITMO), which speaks of the successful implementation of the mega-grant of the Russian government won by them in 2010. Within the country, ITMO actively cooperates with the Russian Academy of Sciences and, first of all, with the A. F. Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute.
The contribution of the domestic corporate sector to the country’s publication output does not yet exceed 1%; only a few small innovative companies took part in the research: New Energy Technologies LLC (Skolkovo; medical equipment, laser technologies, solar energy); NPP “Nanostructured Glass Technology” LLC (Saratov; production of glass micro- and nanostructures for applications in biomedicine and optics); NT-MDT LLC (Zelenograd; scanning probe microscopy); Avesta LLC (Troitsk; lasers and optical systems).
Patenting scientific results
The signal of the transition to the implementation stage can be considered the patenting of scientific results. The dynamics of the issuance of US patents for inventions on three basic topics of nanophotonics is shown in Fig. 5. As in the case of publications, at first, photonic crystals predominated in the thematic structure of inventions, however, then inventive interest shifted in favor of metamaterials and plasmonics. 57% of the total number of patents in these three areas were granted to US patent owners. They are followed by the patent holders from Asian countries: Japan (~13%), South Korea (~7%) and China (~4%). Representatives of Russia were part of the inventive teams in six patents:
“Active photonic crystal waveguide device and method” (patent No. 6674949; issued in 2004.). Inventor from St. Petersburg (Russia) and three from the USA, Canada and France; patent owner – Corning, Inc(USA);
“Plasmonic nanophotonics methods, materials, and apparatuses” (No. 6977767; 2005). An inventor from Dolgoprudny (Russia) and three from the USA; patent owner – Arrowhead Center, Inc (USA);
“Tunable terahertz metamaterial filter” (No. 8958050; 2015). Inventors from St. Petersburg (Russia); patent holder – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (South Korea);
“Self-resonant apparatus for wireless power transmission system” (No. 9330836; 2016). Inventors from St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk and Vsevolozhsk (Russia), as well as South Korea; patent holder – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (South Korea);
“Magnetic resonance imaging machine” (No. 10732237; 2020). Inventors from St. Petersburg (Russia); patent applicant – ITMO University;
“Apparatus and method for controlling laser light propagation direction by using a plurality of nano-antennas” (No. 10831082; 2020). Inventors from Tula, Dolgoprudny and Krasnodar (Russia); patent holder – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (South Korea).
As you can see, the patentable ideas of Russian inventors, not finding interest from Russian high-tech companies, “flow away” abroad. At the same time, according to the forecast of the analytical company ReportLinker (France), the global nanophotonics market (even taking into account the adjustments for the impact of the pandemic) will reach 202 billion dollars by 2027; while the average annual growth rate in the period 2020–2027 will be 37.6% [6].
Conclusion
In recent years, nanophotonics has become a dynamically growing scientific field with a wide range of technological outputs. In the global scientific competition, the transition (since 2012) of the key influence on the research landscape from the group of industrialized countries (G7) to the group of rapidly progressing Asian countries (“A‑7”) is indicative. Against this background, Russia is consistently among the top ten countries in terms of publication output.
An increasing proportion of the world’s nanophotonics research is carried out internationally. At the same time, different countries have their own characteristics: if in the UK, Germany, and the USA, the growth in the total annual production of publications in recent years is fully associated with international cooperation, then in China – mainly with domestic research, and in Russia – with domestic and international research equally.
Domestic research is rather closely integrated with global research: about 53% of all publications and 80% of ITMO publications are internationally co-authored. Russia is part of a cohessive research community with leading Western countries, has strong co-authorship ties with scientists from Australia. In turn, ITMO, thanks to government support, has become a competitive global center for research in the field of nanophotonics. Calculations have shown that international cooperation significantly increases the visibility of Russian publications.
Nanophotonics provides a positive example of the fulfillment of target indicators set for domestic science, for example, by the share of publications in the Web of Science database (2.44% by 2015, according to Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 599 dated 07.05.2012), by the share of articles in co-authorship with foreign scientists (29.6% by 2024, according to Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 377 dated 29.03.2019); the citation rate of Russian publications on nanophotonics has come close to the world average. According to the results of the analysis, one can note a certain deconcentration of research, as well as their decentralization as a result of purposeful scientific policy.
The scientific results of the world’s leading players are increasingly becoming the subject of patenting, behind which are the interests of the corporate sector. A search in the USPTO database, in particular, showed that if at first inventive interest was attracted more by photonic crystals, then in recent years – metamaterials and plasmonics. Unfortunately, Russia is still weakly involved in this “game”.
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Author
Terekhov Alexander Ivanovich, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences; e-mail: a. i.terekhov@mail.ru; Leading Researcher, Central Economics and Mathematics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
IDWoS: AAJ‑1693–2021
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