Understanding innovation of new energy industry: Observing development trend and evolution of hydrogen fuel cell based on patent mining

Abstract

Technological innovation is important to further reduce the cost of hydrogen fuel cells (HFC) and enhance commercial availability. Technology patents hydrogen fuel cell play an important role in understanding the trend of technological innovation and future policymaking. By extracting patent data of hydrogen fuel cells from IncoPat database between 2003 and 2022, the knowledge map of hydrogen fuel cell technology was drawn in this paper based on the statistical analysis method and IPC co-category analysis method. The results shows that: (1) From the technology life cycle trajectory, 2003–2013 is the initial stage of hydrogen fuel cell technology, and 2014–2022 is the rapid development period of hydrogen fuel cells. (2) Through mapping the knowledge map of hotspots in the hydrogen fuel cell technology field using IPC co-category analysis, knowledge map shows 849 nodes and 6116 connected lines, and the network density is 0.017. (3) From the hydrogen fuel cell technology clustering map, a total of nine hot topics were formed in 2003–2022, namely H01M8/04089, C08J5/22, H01M4/88, H01M8/0228, H01M8/10, C25B1/04, G01N27/12, F04D29/58, F17C13/02. (4) 59 significant IPCs were placed in the hydrogen fuel cell technology domain from 2003 to 2022. Moreover, the hydrogen fuel cell technology evolution can be divided into three phases, 2003–2008, 2008–2018, and 2018–2022, respectively.