La ricerca in Nanotecnologie e Nanoscienze in Italia: spesa del settore pubblico e aree tematiche prevalenti

Nanotechnologies and Nanosciences (NST) have become more and more relevant in the field of hard and applied sciences, and topics of interest for social sciences. Regarding the latter field, only a limited number of contributions have been dedicated to the national-level analysis of NST research in Italy, and little attention has been paid to presenting a systemic view of public expenditure and providing information on the research trends. The purpose of this contribution is therefore to offer an initial representation of the state of public research on NST in Italy in view of future studies that need to be addressed on topics related to Italian NST research. Italian data from official statistics on public sector expenditure in NST research are examined and, afterwards, characteristics and trends of this sector are studied through a bibliometric analysis performed on the publications of the Italian largest public research organization, the CNR, National Research Council of Italy. Results show that Italy devotes a non-marginal share of public research funding to the nanotechnology sector. As for the trends of the various NST scientific areas within the CNR, the interests of research have slowly changed, showing a progressive decrease of the topics related to the physical sciences and a simultaneous growing preference for the chemical sciences and, above all, the materials science.