A bibliometric analysis of the toxicity research of carbon nanomaterials

Carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) are widely used, which has caused huge pressure on the ecological environment, especially human health. It is necessary to have a detailed understanding and real-time tracking of the current research progress and hot spots on the toxicity of carbon nanomaterials, so as to provide guidance for researchers in this field to carry out new research. In this paper, CiteSpace software was used to perform bibliometric and visual analysis of all publications related to the toxicity of carbon nanomaterials in the Web of Science database. The results show that the number of annual articles has increased significantly since 2004, and 83.1% of the articles were published in the last decade (2013-2022). China has the largest number of publications, while the United States plays an authoritative role in this field. ACS Appl Material Inter is the most published journal, and ACS Nano is the most cited journal. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dayong Wang were the institutions and authors with the largest number of papers, respectively. The toxicity and mechanism of CNMs (such as oxidative stress, cell death, and cell membrane damage) and their applications in biomedicine, material synthesis, and sensors, etc., are the research hot topics in this field. The comprehensive risk assessment and safe utilization of CNMs may be an urgent problem to be solved currently. Our findings present the hot topics and development trends in the field of carbon nanomaterials toxicity, which would be helpful to provide a reference for future research directions.