Evolutionary evaluation of energy and nanotechnology relationship

Abstract

As a result of changing conditions in the world due to increasing population, scarce natural resources and climate change, there are increasing number of research activities in the areas of food, water and energy, which are critical for humanity. With the growing threat of pollution, global warming, and energy crises caused by countries strong dependence on the dwindling supply of nonrenewable fossil fuels, the search for clean, sustainable and renewable alternative energy resources is one of the most urgent challenges to the sustainable development of human civilization [1]. According to Jones (2009), these challenges can be overcome by applying nano-science and technology to the energy field [2]. Nanomaterials can be produced in a variety of material classes such as: carbon-based nanomaterials, nanocomposites, metals and alloys, and these classes can be produced with different shapes and properties. One of the interesting properties of such nanomaterials is their very high surface area per unit volume that leads to much higher surface activity than in the bulk material. This has potential for speeding up chemical reactions and catalysis and thus improving the efficiency of many processes. There are many applications of nanotechnologies in energy systems have been identified in various reviews as: 1) energy conversion, 2) energy storage, 3) energy transmission, and 4) energy use [3, 4]. The aim of the study is to analyze the relationship of energy and nanotechnology fields by using scientometric methods. For this study, Web of Science database was used with the help of lexical search query strategy. Nanotechnology and the keyword set that is applied by [5, 6] is used to gather data in related journals. To determine the energy journals experts in the energy field are further consulted and then the whole collection downloaded for last 10 years period. The collected data is analyzed by using text-mining techniques to understand the relationship and convergence between nanotechnology and energy fields. Finally, future collaboration opportunities are extracted and interpreted for this field. © 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.