Elucidating Carbon Dot Research Coupled with Bibliometric Analysis

Two decades have gone by since the discovery of carbon dots (CDs) and a lot of research on CDs has been published. However, still, there is no comprehensive overview of how this research has evolved and to which direction it is going. Herein, with the power of big data analytics, an attempt was made to illuminate the journey of CD research. A total of 24599 publications from the Web of Science Core Collection for the period of 2004 – 2024 were studied with Biblioshiny and VOSviewer coupled with manual studies. The included publications originate from 115 countries, ~8K institutions, and ~66K authors. China produced ~50% of the publications. The Chinese Academy of Science appeared as the most productive institution. Authors with nine or more publications emerged as the core authors. Publications were categorized as per the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Synthesis (green synthesis, facile synthesis, hydrothermal synthesis), sensing, photoluminescence, photocatalysis, composites, drug delivery, bioimaging, etc. appeared as the hot research topics on CD.