Dubnium

Dubnium (Db) — 10-Year Trends

As of 2026-09-25 · the last 10 years

Dubnium’s research intensity has fallen to about 11% of its own all-time peak, a level reached after a steady decline over the last decade.

Research intensity ran from about 22% of the element's own all-time peak in 2016 to about 11% in 2026 — a steady decline, and the all-time peak (2009) lies before this window. Over the same span its share of research attention across all elements fell. Among the 118 elements, dubnium has one of the smaller research literatures of any element.

The number of papers involving the element fell from about 22 in 2016 to about 8 in 2025 (0.36x). That is slower than the literature as a whole grew over the same years, so the element lost ground in the wider body of research.

The research community that dominates this field is Superheavy Nuclei, Heavy-Ion Collisions, and Nuclear Structure. Dubnium is a minor presence in this much larger community, with under 1% of its papers involving dubnium. However, this community accounts for about 100% of dubnium's recent research, a share that has risen from about 93% in the previous period. The work here focuses on nuclear properties and decay chains. A 2024 paper on the spontaneous fission of the odd-Z isotope Db-255, cited about 12 times, anchors this area, alongside a 2026 study validating vacuum chromatography for superheavy element chemistry, cited once.

Other communities, such as Machine-Learned Potentials and First-Principles Simulation of Condensed Matter and Lanthanide and Actinide Coordination Chemistry for Magnetic and Optical Applications, show no significant share of dubnium research in the current period, remaining steady at negligible levels. A community focused on Nonlinear Optical Crystals for Ultraviolet and Infrared Frequency Conversion saw its share decline from about 7% to 0%, with a 2019 paper on anion exchange behavior of homologues cited about 10 times representing the tail end of that activity.

The most-cited paper in the window, "Vacuum Chromatography of Tl on SiO2 at the Single-Atom Level" (2016, cited about 33 times), belongs to the superheavy nuclei community and highlights the ongoing interest in chemical separation techniques for these elements.

For a deeper look at dubnium's current standing, see the Last 12 Months report or Executive Brief.