Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2025 Mar 11:20:2937-2968.
doi: 10.2147/IJN.S502490. eCollection 2025.

The Current Status, Hotspots, and Development Trends of Nanoemulsions: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Review

Guojun Sun  1 , Liying Wang  1 , Zuojun Dong  1 , Yanxiao Zhang  1 , Yan Yang  1 , Miao Hu  2 , Hui Fang  3   4
Affiliations
Review

The Current Status, Hotspots, and Development Trends of Nanoemulsions: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Review

Guojun Sun et al. Int J Nanomedicine. .

Abstract

Nanoemulsions, which are characterized by their nanometer-scale droplets, have gained significant attention in different fields, such as medicine, food, cosmetics, and agriculture, because of their unique properties. With an increasing number of countries engaging in research on nanoemulsions, interest in their properties, preparation methods, and applications has increased. Hence, tracing the relevant research on nanoemulsions published in the past ten years on a global scale, by conducting data mining and visualization analysis on a sufficiently large text dataset through bibliometrics, sorting out and summarizing certain indicators, the development history, research status and research hotspots in the field of nanoemulsions can be clearly revealed, providing reference value and significance for subsequent research. This bibliometric review examines the research landscape of nanoemulsions from 2013-2023 via the SCI-E and SSCI databases, providing insights into the current status, hotspots, and future trends of this field. To offer a comprehensive overview, this analysis includes publication counts, author keywords, institutional contributions, research areas, prolific authors, highly cited papers and hot research papers. The findings reveal that China led in nanoemulsions research, followed by USA, India, and Brazil, with the University of Massachusetts emerging as a key player with the highest average number of citations per article (ACPP) and h-index. Food Chemistry, Pharmaceutics, and the Journal of Drug Delivery Science and Technology are among the top journals publishing in this area. Chemistry, pharmacology, and pharmacy emerged as the primary research domains, with McClements DJ as the most prolific and influential author. In keyword analysis, essential oil nanoemulsions are currently the main preparation direction, and various characteristics of nanoemulsions, such as their bioavailability, stability, biocompatibility, and antioxidant and antibacterial properties, have also been studied extensively. Research hotspots are focused mostly on the development of new applications and technologies for nanoemulsions.

Keywords: bibliometrics; bioavailability; drug delivery; essential oil; keyword analysis; nanoemulsions.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Annual trends in the number of published articles related to nanoemulsions.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Collaboration matrix map of the top 20 most productive countries/regions.
Figure 3
Figure 3
DDA cluster map of the cooperation of the top 15 institutions.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Bubble chart of the top 20 nanoemulsions research areas by year.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Bubble chart of the top 20 journals publishing papers on nanoemulsions.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Bubble chart of the top 30 author keywords by year.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Sankey chart of the top 10 institutions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Singh Y, Meher JG, Raval K, et al. Nanoemulsion: concepts, development and applications in drug delivery. J Control Release. 2017;252:28–49. doi:10.1016/j.jconrel.2017.03.008 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Tadros T, Izquierdo R, Esquena J, Solans C. Formation and stability of nano-emulsions. Adv Colloid Interface Sci. 2004;108:303–318. doi:10.1016/j.cis.2003.10.023 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Solans C, Izquierdo P, Nolla J, Azemar N, Garcia-Celma MJ. Nano-emulsions. Curr Opin Colloid Interface Sci. 2005;10(3–4):102–110. doi:10.1016/j.cocis.2005.06.004 - DOI
    1. Ozogul Y, Karsli GT, Durmus M, et al. Recent developments in industrial applications of nanoemulsions. Adv Colloid Interface Sci. 2022;304: 102685. - PubMed
    1. Kaur M, Garg T, Rath G, Goyal AK. Current nanotechnological strategies for effective delivery of bioactive drug molecules in the treatment of tuberculosis. Crit Rev Ther Drug Carrier Syst. 2014;31(1):49–88. doi:10.1615/CritRevTherDrugCarrierSyst.2014008285 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources