Paper TF-ThP35
Characterizing the Field of Atomic Layer Deposition: Authors, Topics, and Collaborations

Thursday, November 2, 2017, 6:30 pm, Room Central Hall

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) has become one of the key techniques in thin film growth with applications in areas such as microelectronics, advanced sensors, energy storage, and more. Using a combination of bibliometric, social network, and text analysis, we describe the evolution of ALD as a field over time. In particular, we have examined the evolution in terms of publications, as well as changes in authors, journals, and collaborators.

The study of the collaboration network of ALD scientists over time shows how the ALD research community, originally consisting of small isolated clusters, becomes both larger and more interconnected. The formation of a single large connected component in the collaboration network coincides in time with the first AVS-sponsored symposium on the subject. As of 2015, the largest connected component spans 90% of the authors. In addition, the evolution of network centrality measures such as degree and betweenness centrality and author productivity allow us to identify the central figures in ALD according to each metric and their evolution over time, including the appearance of new "stars" in the last decade. Finally, we carried out a study of the title words of the papers in our dataset. Through the evolution of the technical terms in the titles we can map the evolution of the field. The results are consistent with a shift in focus on research topics towards energy applications and nanotechnology, and an increase in interdisciplinarity that correlates well with the evolution of the main scientific journals that publish ALD research.