Development trends of rare-earth luminescence: A bibliometric analysis

Rare-earth phosphors are gaining widespread attention due to their extensive applications from basic applied sciences to commercial hi-tech devices. The research publications on these materials are increasing exponentially and it is the need of the hour to analyze this particular topic statistically. This study aims to perform bibliometric analysis on 1315 documents published between 1971 and 2022 on scopus and web of science databases. The identified documents were examined and visualized using biblioshiny app of bibliometrix-R package. Ever upsurging growth in annual productions deciphers the significance of these phosphors. In terms of number of publications and Bradford’s law ‘Journal of luminescence’ and ‘Journal of alloys and compounds’ are identified as leading core sources whereas as per h-index criteria Nanoscale and Biomaterials are the high impact journals. Keyword analysis, cluster mapping and thematic mapping suggest that up-conversion nanophosphors is a growing field and the string connecting the basic sciences with biological applications of rare-earths has yet to be strengthened.