Hybrid nanomaterials research—is it really interdisciplinary?

This chapter explores whether and how the field of hybrid nanomaterials is interdisciplinary, with the aim of understanding the underlying knowledge structure of this book. To do so, we conducted a bibliometric analysis based on 113 review publications selected by the contributors. The results suggest that integration of different disciplines is carried out first, around research on specific inorganic support materials (quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, etc.), and second, around research on applications in sensing and molecular machines. The centrality of sensing applications and their pervasive presence in other clusters suggest that they constitute the key 2 integrative driver for interdisciplinarity in hybrid nanomaterials. The weak coherence of the field may possibly indicate that the field is in its early stages. Disciplinary diversity in hybrid nanomaterials is found to be higher than the norm in the chemistry disciplines in which it is embedded. The field draws mainly on disciplines fro