Knowledge generation and diffusion in science & technology: an empirical study of SiC-MOSFET based on scientific papers and patents

ABSTRACT

Scientific papers and patents are reliable sources of knowledge carriers for measuring science and technology advances, predicting technological trends, and formulating technology strategies. Although the idea of entirely using the two knowledge carriers is rapidly emerging in academic discussion, a theoretical framing of the comparisons is still not present in literature. This study conducts bibliometrics on 2986 patent families and 4755 scientific papers related to silicon carbide metal–oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (SiC-MOSFET) to identify its technological trends and compare the similarities and differences in knowledge generation and diffusion in science and technology. Our methodological framework consists of a combination of geographic distribution (identifying the research developments and distribution), cooperation networks (analyzing organisation collaboration and individual research cooperation), noun phrase co-occurrence clusters (discovering hot research topics), and the global main path analyses of citation networks (tracking the trajectory of knowledge flows). Ultimately, our results contribute to recent bibliometric paradigms beyond discovering the role of scientific papers and patents in promoting science and technology integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Bibliometrics
• knowledge diffusion
• global main path analysis
• SiC-MOSFET

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Key Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province: [Grant Number 2019SJZDA036]; National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 71573124].

Notes on contributors

Weiwei Pan

Weiwei Pan is a doctoral student at the College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), China. Her research includes bibliometric analysis, science and technology innovation networks, and Blockchain game analysis. She has published managerial journal articles and participated numerous research projects.

Lirong Jian

Lirong Jian is a professor at the College of Economics and Management department, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA). Her research interests include science and technology innovation networks, prediction and decision-making theory and application, knowledge management. She has published academic papers in managerial journals such as Journal of Statistical Mechanics-Theory and Experiment, European Journal of Operational Research, Scientometrics, Journal of Grey System, Kybernetes, Journal of Energy Storage.

Tao Liu

Tao Liu is an engineer at State Key Laboratory of Wide-Bandgap Semiconductor Power Electronic Devices, Nanjing Electronic Devices Institute, China. His research includes reliability analysis of semiconductor devices, especially in SiC-SBD, SiC-MOSFETs.