Global research progression on electro-catalysts for direct methanol fuel cells between 1992 and 2023 using bibliometric indicators

Abstract

Over the past decades, there has been an increase in the awareness of direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs). This study analysed the research activities on electro-catalysts for DMFCs from 1992 to 2023 using bibliometric analysis. This was achieved by extracting the relevant data from web of science (https://www.webofknowledge.com), and retrieved data were analysed by using the Rstudio software. A total of 1912 documents were recovered from this database. Rstudio outputs were annual scientific production, most productive authors, top manuscripts per citations, corresponding author’s countries, total citations per country, most relevant sources, most relevant keywords, and research collaboration index. It was observed from the retrieved data that there is an increase in publications of research on electro-catalysts for direct methanol fuel cells from 1992 to 2020. A huge drop was observed from 2021 to 2023. The data provided a documents per author of 0.408 and authors per document of 2.45. It is observed that collaboration index is 2.48. China, USA, and Korea are the top 3 countries in both total citations and countries with most articles in this field. This study is of great help in informing communities, researchers, policy makers, and industries about the importance of DMFC development in providing alternative power source.