Research into materials such as graphene that work at such a small scale that they are considered two-dimensional has been one of the trend areas of physics in the past decade.

This is shown by the world¡¯s second-most "prominent" science topic, according to Elsevier¡¯s SciVal bibliometric analysis tool, currently being a specific research area into this two-dimensional landscape.

The research ¨C which involves looking at nanomaterials that include the chemical element molybdenum ¨C is being led, according to the bibliometric data, by two academic centres, one based at Cornell University in the US and another around the city of Toulouse in France.

In Toulouse, a major engineering city in France that also is home to its aerospace industry in the form of aircraft manufacture Airbus, the research has involved institutions that are part of the Federal University of Toulouse Midi-Pyr¨¦n¨¦es. These include Universit¨¦ Toulouse III Paul Sabatier and the Institut National des Sciences Appliqu¨¦es de Toulouse (INSA).

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Research involving molybdenum compounds and nanotechnology at the institutions appears in the most highly cited research on the topic eight times more than the world average.

Meanwhile, Cornell, where research in the field is around 7.6 times more likely to be highly cited than the world average, putting it just after the Toulouse institutions, also has the most cited individual researcher on the same measure.

Top 10 scholars in research into molybdenum compounds; monolayers; dichalcogenides TMDs research, 2014 to 2017, by expected output in top 1 per cent of world's most cited publications (world average =1)?

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Source: Elsevier/SciVal

David Muller, acting director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, has, according to this biography on the university¡¯s website, published more than 150 papers in his career, including more than 35 in Nature or Science, while his work has received more than 10,000 citations.?

On nanotechnology made of molybdenum compounds, he published nine papers from 2014 to 2017, all but two of which have made it into the top 1 per cent of cited articles on the topic.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com