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Inorganic Chemistry research

Inorganic Chemistry is a subfield of Chemistry. Science Explorer counts 402k research works in it since 1950. 9.9% of them reached the world's top 10% most cited for their field and year.

In short: study of the synthesis and behavior of inorganic and organometallic compounds.

Research works
402k
fractional, since 1950
In the world top 10%
40k
per year above
Top-10% rate
9.9%
share of its works in the world top 10%
Topics
12
Growth, 2018-21 → 2022-25
+15%
the tick is no change
Largest producer
China
49% of the 10 largest, 2022-now
Inorganic Chemistry

What is Inorganic Chemistry research about, and what is growing?

By the world's output in 2021-25, its most used keywords are Catalysis, Metal-Organic Frameworks, Porous Materials, Coordination Chemistry, Actinides, Uranium. Gaining share since 2011-15: Coconut, Virgin Coconut Oil, Metal-Organic Frameworks, Porous Materials, Catalysis. Losing share: Crystal Structure Refinement, Hirshfeld Surface Analysis, Dioxygen Activation, Metalloenzyme.

▲ gaining share of this field◆ holding its share▼ losing share

Size is the world's fractional works in 2021-25 in the topics tagged with each word; colour compares the word's share of this field with 2011-15. Each links to the topic it comes from most.

All 27 words, with their numbers
  1. Catalysis28k▲ 1.31×3 topics
  2. Metal-Organic Frameworks21k▲ 1.60×1 topic
  3. Porous Materials21k▲ 1.60×1 topic
  4. Coordination Chemistry12k▼ 0.73×2 topics
  5. Actinides9,468◆ 1.03×1 topic
  6. Uranium9,468◆ 1.03×1 topic
  7. Crystal Structure8,259◆ 1.15×2 topics
  8. Asymmetric Catalysis7,088▼ 0.75×1 topic
  9. Hydrogenation7,088▼ 0.75×1 topic
  10. Mesoporous Materials5,602◆ 1.01×1 topic
  11. Zeolites5,602◆ 1.01×1 topic
  12. Inorganic Pigments4,508▲ 1.31×1 topic
  13. Synthesis4,508▲ 1.31×1 topic
  14. Coconut3,970▲ 2.6×1 topic
  15. Virgin Coconut Oil3,970▲ 2.6×1 topic
  16. Fluoride Ion Batteries3,872▼ 0.83×1 topic
  17. Noble Gas Compounds3,872▼ 0.83×1 topic
  18. Inorganic Clusters3,751◆ 1.00×1 topic
  19. Oxynitride Perovskites3,751◆ 1.00×1 topic
  20. Crystal Structure Refinement2,677▼ 0.36×1 topic
  21. Hirshfeld Surface Analysis2,677▼ 0.36×1 topic
  22. Dioxygen Activation2,596▼ 0.60×1 topic
  23. Metalloenzyme2,596▼ 0.60×1 topic
  24. Covalent Radii1,899▼ 0.62×1 topic
  25. Main Group Chemistry1,899▼ 0.62×1 topic
  26. Chemistry1,280▼ 0.61×1 topic
  27. Vanadium1,280▼ 0.61×1 topic

Which countries lead Inorganic Chemistry research?

On research quality in 2022-now, China, the United States and Germany rank highest in Inorganic Chemistry. By volume, China and the United States publish the most (23k and 5.1k works in 2022-now).

By research quality, 2022-now

  1. 1 China #2 all time 1.24× citation excellence · 1.11× journals · 100% breadth 13.1% top 10% · 20k works
  2. 2 United States #1 all time 0.99× citation excellence · 1.65× journals · 100% breadth 9.8% top 10% · 4.5k works
  3. 3 Germany #3 all time 0.88× citation excellence · 1.37× journals · 100% breadth 8.5% top 10% · 2.2k works
  4. 4 United Kingdom #4 all time 1.08× citation excellence · 1.44× journals · 100% breadth 10.6% top 10% · 1.1k works
  5. 5 India #9 all time 0.85× citation excellence · 0.59× journals · 100% breadth 8.2% top 10% · 4.4k works
  6. 6 France #5 all time 0.75× citation excellence · 1.12× journals · 100% breadth 7.4% top 10% · 1.5k works
  7. 7 Spain #6 all time 0.92× citation excellence · 1.17× journals · 100% breadth 8.4% top 10% · 928 works
  8. 8 Switzerland #7 all time 1.25× citation excellence · 1.82× journals · 100% breadth 11.6% top 10% · 262 works
  9. 9 South Korea #13 all time 1.09× citation excellence · 0.90× journals · 100% breadth 10.9% top 10% · 979 works
  10. 10 Canada #10 all time 1.10× citation excellence · 1.23× journals · 100% breadth 9.8% top 10% · 545 works

The track on each row is that row's top-10% rate. The ranking itself is the quality score, which compares the rate with what each place's own topics predict, adds its share of papers in the Nature Index journals, and counts output and breadth too.

Of 33 countries ranked in Inorganic Chemistry. Ranked on the quality score for 2022-now; the bracket is the all-time rank.

All countries ranked in Inorganic Chemistry

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 China 23k works
  2. 2 United States 5.1k works
  3. 3 India 5.1k works
  4. 4 Russia 2.6k works
  5. 5 Germany 2.5k works
  6. 6 Japan 2.2k works
  7. 7 Indonesia 1.7k works
  8. 8 France 1.7k works
  9. 9 United Kingdom 1.2k works
  10. 10 Iran 1.1k works

How concentrated that is

The same countries as shares of everything the list above accounts for. A node where two countries do two thirds of the work and one spread evenly across twelve read alike as a ranking and not at all alike here.

China: 49.3%United States: 11.2%India: 11.1%Russia: 5.6%6 others listed: 22.9%49%largest
China23k · 49.3%United States5,121 · 11.2%India5,069 · 11.1%Russia2,570 · 5.6%6 others listed10k · 22.9%

Shares of the rows listed above, not of the whole node.

Which institutions lead Inorganic Chemistry research?

Chinese Academy of Sciences (China) ranks first in Inorganic Chemistry on research quality in 2022-now, followed by University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Nankai University.

By research quality, 2022-now

  1. 1 Chinese Academy of Sciences China · Beijing · #1 all time 16.7% top 10% · 1.6k works
  2. 2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences China · Beijing · #2 all time 19.7% top 10% · 324 works
  3. 3 Nankai University China · Tianjin · #17 all time 19.5% top 10% · 251 works
  4. 4 Tsinghua University China · Beijing · #12 all time 17.2% top 10% · 202 works
  5. 5 Zhejiang University China · Hangzhou · #34 all time 19.3% top 10% · 227 works
  6. 6 Shanghai Jiao Tong University China · Shanghai · #15 all time 21.7% top 10% · 151 works
  7. 7 University of Science and Technology of China China · Hefei · #18 all time 17.8% top 10% · 165 works
  8. 8 Max Planck Society Germany · Munich · #4 all time 16.1% top 10% · 125 works
  9. 9 Southern University of Science and Technology China · Shenzhen · #5 all time 19.6% top 10% · 102 works
  10. 10 Jilin University China · Changchun · #38 all time 15.4% top 10% · 259 works

The track on each row is that row's top-10% rate. The ranking itself is the quality score, which compares the rate with what each place's own topics predict, adds its share of papers in the Nature Index journals, and counts output and breadth too.

Of 135 institutions above the floor of 40 fractional works in Inorganic Chemistry.

Top 100 Inorganic Chemistry institutions

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 Chinese Academy of SciencesChina 1.8k works
  2. 2 Russian Academy of SciencesRussia 1.3k works
  3. 3 Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueFrance 872 works
  4. 4 University of Chinese Academy of SciencesChina 364 works
  5. 5 Jilin UniversityChina 292 works
  6. 6 Nankai UniversityChina 282 works
  7. 7 Sichuan UniversityChina 278 works
  8. 8 Helmholtz Association of German Research CentresGermany 271 works
  9. 9 Zhejiang UniversityChina 249 works
  10. 10 Tsinghua UniversityChina 229 works

Who are the leading researchers in Inorganic Chemistry?

Counting only their work in Inorganic Chemistry, Omar K. Farha, Avelino Corma and Omar M. Yaghi have the most papers in the world top 10% for their subfield and year beyond the 10% expected.

  1. 1 Omar K. Farha United States · #308 worldwide overall 142.0 of 281 papers here in the top 10%
  2. 2 Avelino Corma Spain · #10,644 worldwide overall 127.4 of 354 papers here in the top 10%
  3. 3 Omar M. Yaghi United States · #24 worldwide overall 105.8 of 164 papers here in the top 10%
  4. 4 Banglin Chen United States · #325 worldwide overall 110.8 of 219 papers here in the top 10%
  5. 5 Hong-Cai “Joe” Zhou United States · #1,161 worldwide overall 95.5 of 185 papers here in the top 10%
  6. 6 Christian Serre France · #2,014 worldwide overall 94.9 of 199 papers here in the top 10%
  7. 7 Matthias Beller Germany · #34,777 worldwide overall 111.2 of 391 papers here in the top 10%
  8. 8 Joseph T. Hupp United States · #3,217 worldwide overall 87.8 of 164 papers here in the top 10%
  9. 9 Susumu Kitagawa Japan · #27,428 worldwide overall 96.5 of 290 papers here in the top 10%
  10. 10 Xiangke Wang China · #60 worldwide overall 76.4 of 127 papers here in the top 10%

Ranked on their work in Inorganic Chemistry alone: how many more of their papers here reached the world top 10% for their subfield and year than the 10% expected, among 826,345 ranked researchers with a paper here. Each paper counts once, so many strong papers outrank one famous one, and a long record of ordinary papers does not climb. Identities come from OpenAlex author disambiguation, which occasionally merges or splits people.

Top 100 Inorganic Chemistry researchers

What are the most cited papers in Inorganic Chemistry?

The most cited paper in Inorganic Chemistry is "A consistent and accurate ab initio parametrization of density functional dispersion correction (DFT-D) for the 94 elements H-Pu" (Stefan Grimme, Jens Antony, Stephan Ehrlich et al., 2010), with 59,482 citations. Next come "Semiempirical GGA‐type density functional constructed with a long‐range dispersion correction" (31,395) and "SHELXT – Integrated space-group and crystal-structure determination" (29,598).

Most cited papers
#PaperReleasedCitations
1 A consistent and accurate ab initio parametrization of density functional dispersion correction (DFT-D) for the 94 elements H-Pu Stefan Grimme, Jens Antony, Stephan Ehrlich et al. · The Journal of Chemical Physics 16 Apr 2010 59,482
2 Semiempirical GGA‐type density functional constructed with a long‐range dispersion correction Stefan Grimme · Journal of Computational Chemistry 5 Sep 2006 31,395
3 SHELXT – Integrated space-group and crystal-structure determination George M. Sheldrick · Acta Crystallographica Section A Foundations and Advances Open access 23 Dec 2014 29,598
4 Effect of the damping function in dispersion corrected density functional theory Stefan Grimme, Stephan Ehrlich, Lars Goerigk · Journal of Computational Chemistry Mar 2011 28,444
5 A climbing image nudged elastic band method for finding saddle points and minimum energy paths Graeme Henkelman, Blas Pedro Uberuaga, Hannes Jónsson · The Journal of Chemical Physics 8 Dec 2000 21,923
All 100 most cited papers, with filters and sorting

Where is Inorganic Chemistry research done?

The largest centres of Inorganic Chemistry research in 2022-now are Beijing (China), Shanghai (China), Nanjing (China) and Moscow (Russia). Among places with at least 20 works in it, it is an unusually large share of all research in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, Mülheim and Kālpākkam.

Largest cities, 2022-now

  1. 1 BeijingChina 3.5k works
  2. 2 ShanghaiChina 1.3k works
  3. 3 NanjingChina 999 works
  4. 4 MoscowRussia 995 works
  5. 5 TianjinChina 892 works
  6. 6 GuangzhouChina 737 works
  7. 7 WuhanChina 721 works
  8. 8 HangzhouChina 717 works
  9. 9 Xi'anChina 674 works
  10. 10 TokyoJapan 566 works

Where it is the local speciality

  1. Bagnols-sur-CèzeFR · 24.4 works42×
  2. MülheimDE · 62.7 works21×
  3. KālpākkamIN · 37.5 works16×
  4. RayongTH · 21.6 works16×
← less than its size predicts1×more →

Location quotient: how much more of its research is in Inorganic Chemistry than the world average.

See Inorganic Chemistry on the map

Inorganic Chemistry research by country

The best places for Inorganic Chemistry research inside each country, with that country's researchers and world standing.

Where is the best place to study Inorganic Chemistry?

Among universities, judged by research, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology and Nankai University score highest, combining standing in the field's ranking, citation excellence, specialisation, size, growth and international reach. Research strength is one signal when choosing where to study; it does not measure teaching.

0%10%20%mean 18.62%fractional works in this field (log) →share of work in the world top 10% →Southern University …Nankai UniversityNorthwestern Univers…University of Chines…
above the meannear itbelow it

One dot per university in the first ten of the table below, at the default weights. The upper left is the interesting corner: small places doing unusually strong work.

Standingthis field's institution ranking, three quarters all time and a quarter 2022-now
50%
Citation excellenceshare of its work in the world top 10%, 2022-now and all time averaged
20%
Specialisationhow much of its work is in this field, counted up to 10× the world share
5%
Sizeits output in this field, on a log scale
15%
Growthoutput growth, counted from -20% to +20%
5%
Internationalshare of its work with a co-author abroad
5%
Each slider sets a weight; the share it gets of the score is beside it.
#UniversityScoreRank in field (all time)Top 10%SpecialisationWorksGrowth
1University of Chinese Academy of SciencesChina 89.3#2 (#2)18.6%4.3×364 +20.8%
2Southern University of Science and TechnologyChina 74.6#9 (#5)19.5%4.1×113 +70.7%
3Nankai UniversityChina 72.6#3 (#17)19.2%8.0×282 +25.5%
4Northwestern UniversityUnited States 70.9#15 (#3)19.2%1.8×80 -19.1%
5Tsinghua UniversityChina 70.7#4 (#12)16.4%1.9×229 +28.3%
6Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversityChina 67.9#6 (#15)20.4%1.1×171 +54.6%
7University of Science and Technology of ChinaChina 66.5#7 (#18)17.2%3.0×184 +81.3%
8King Abdullah University of Science and TechnologySaudi Arabia 65.0#23 (#14)21.1%4.8×68 -4.9%
9Zhejiang UniversityChina 63.6#5 (#34)18.9%1.8×249 +23.5%
10Sun Yat-sen UniversityChina 60.9#16 (#24)15.7%1.7×182 +30.7%

Universities only. The score blends standing (50%), citation excellence (20%), size (15%), specialisation (5%), growth (5%), international reach (5%), 2022-now; growth compares 2018-21 with 2022-25 and counts up to +20%, since a jump from a small base is mostly noise. Standing is the score in this field's institution ranking, three quarters over all time and a quarter 2022-now; excellence averages the two windows too. Four years alone undercount fields such as AI, where many conference and arXiv papers from 2022 on carry no affiliation in the data.

Every institution in Inorganic Chemistry, country by country

Is Inorganic Chemistry research growing?

Output in 2022-2025 was 15% higher than in 2018-2021, peaking in 2025. The fastest-growing topics are Pigment Synthesis and Properties, Inorganic Chemistry and Materials and Coconut Research and Applications.

still counting19801990200020102020
grewheldshrank

The same series as a ribbon: one cell per year, darker for more. The line above answers how much; this answers when.

Its share of all research

Growing output can still be a shrinking share: all of science grows. This is Inorganic Chemistry as a percentage of every work published that year, 0.25% in 2024.

still counting0.25%0.50%0.75%Inorganic Chemistry0.25% in 202519801990200020102020

Fractional works of Inorganic Chemistry over all fractional works that year. How the balance of science has shifted.

How much of it reaches the world top 10%

Year by year.

still counting5%10%15%Inorganic Chemistry9.9% in 2025200020102020

Of each year's works in it, the share that reached the world's 10% most cited for their field and year. A field is the world for its own topics, so there is no other line to hold it against.

Which topics inside it are moving

Growth and decline on one axis around a shared zero. Two lists side by side hide the thing that matters: whether the growth dwarfs the decline, or the other way round.

  1. Pigment Synthesis and Properties+41%
  2. Inorganic Chemistry and Materials+38%
  3. Coconut Research and Applications+26%
  4. Metal-Organic Frameworks: Synthesis and Applications+26%
  5. Radioactive element chemistry and processing+10%
  6. Asymmetric Hydrogenation and Catalysis+10%
  7. Vanadium and Halogenation Chemistry-1%
  8. Metal-Catalyzed Oxygenation Mechanisms-10%
  9. Synthesis and characterization of novel inorganic/organometallic compounds-11%
  10. Crystal structures of chemical compounds-22%
← shrinkingno changegrowing →

Growth in output from 2018-21 to 2022-25. Every topic is a page of its own.

What does Inorganic Chemistry include?

Metal-Organic Frameworks: Synthesis and Applications: 64k fractional worksRadioactive element chemistry and processing: 63k fractional worksAsymmetric Hydrogenation…47kAsymmetric Hydrogenation and Catalysis: 47k fractional worksInorganic Fluorides and …38kInorganic Fluorides and Related Compounds: 38k fractional worksZeolite Catalysis and Synthesis: 35k fractional worksCrystal structures of chemical compounds: 32k fractional worksInorganic Chemistry and …29kInorganic Chemistry and Materials: 29k fractional worksSynthesis and characterization of novel inorganic/organometallic compounds: 28k fractional worksMetal-Catalyzed Oxygenation Mechanisms: 24k fractional worksPigment Synthesis and Properties: 18k fractional worksVanadium and Halogenation Chemistry: 12k fractional worksCoconut Research and Applications: 10k fractional works

Area is fractional works in that topic. Every name below is a page of its own.

Share who leads Inorganic Chemistry

Who leads Inorganic Chemistry, on Science Explorer

A card with the countries and institutions that lead Inorganic Chemistry, for a post or a slide.

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1200 × 630 PNG, sized for social posts, drawn from the latest snapshot.

The leading institutions' badges6Each links to that institution's page and updates with every snapshot

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