An empirical study of nanowire technological trends

This paper follows a bibliometric method for a nanowire case to make evident the technological trends, to present the relationship between patents, to help the researchers to discover relatively significant patents, and to analyze important relationships between patents to identify those with most commercial potential and those which are critical technologies. This research focuses on a nanowire case study due to fact that this field is one of the most mature and has received the most investment in the study of nanotechnology. In terms of methodological approach, this study uses a different patent collection method than previous studies. This new method offers a new taxonomy that could make a significant impact on accurate patent data quests and increase the reliability of the patent analyses. Given that patent data are valuable sources of technology innovation and for forecasting technical change, this study utilizes nanowire patent documents to pick out the technological trends and to identify those nanowire technologies which have the most commercial potential and which are critical at the organizational, national and international levels.