Francium

Francium (Fr) — 10-Year Trends

As of 2026-09-11 · the last 10 years

Francium’s research intensity stands at about 33% of its own all-time peak, a level that has held steady over the last decade despite the element’s all-time high occurring in 1965.

Research intensity ran from about 37% of the element's own all-time peak in 2016 to about 33% in 2026 — flat overall, with some movement in between, and the all-time peak (1965) lies before this window. Over the same span its share of research attention across all elements held steady. Among the 118 elements, francium has one of the smaller research literatures of any element.

The number of papers involving the element rose from about 73 in 2016 to about 106 in 2025 (1.45x). 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 even as its own count rose.

The core of francium research remains its atomic physics, specifically the Francium Electric Dipole Moment and Hyperfine Structure. These papers investigate the atomic electric dipole moment and hyperfine structure of francium, distinct from the broader community's focus on optical clocks. Francium is a minor presence in this much larger community, with about 1% of its papers involving the element. However, this subcommunity still holds the largest share of francium-specific research, accounting for about 36% of the element's recent work, though this share is declining from 54% in the previous period. A key text in this area is the 2022 "Survey of Hyperfine Structure Measurements in Alkali Atoms," cited about 38 times.

A significant shift has occurred toward Radioligand Therapy and Nuclear Imaging for Prostate, Thyroid, and Neuroendocrine Cancers. Francium is a minor presence in this community, with under 1% of its papers involving the element, yet it now represents about 23% of francium's recent research, rising from zero in the earlier period. This growth is anchored by work on alpha-particle nanogenerators, such as the 2022 study on "Treatment of Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia with the Targeted Alpha-Particle Nanogenerator Actinium-225-Lintuzumab," cited about 65 times.

The Synthesis and Decay of Superheavy Elements and Heavy-Ion Collision Physics community also features francium as a minor presence, with about 1% of its papers involving the element. This community accounts for about 16% of francium's recent research, a decline from 30% in the previous period. Research here includes the 2023 paper "Effect of cluster transfer on the production of neutron-rich nuclides near N = 126 in multinucleon-transfer reactions," cited about 13 times.

Finally, Perovskite Solar Cells and Tandem Architectures for Photovoltaic Energy Conversion has emerged as a new area of interest. Francium is a minor presence here, with under 1% of its papers involving the element, but it now holds about 9% of francium's recent research, rising from zero. This is driven by computational studies like the 2024 paper "Exploring the influence of pressure-induced semiconductor-to-metal transition on the physical properties of cubic perovskites FrXCl3 (X = Ge and Sn)," cited about 53 times.

Overall, the literature is consolidating around nuclear medicine and computational materials science, while traditional atomic physics and nuclear synthesis lose relative share. The remainder of the research, holding steady at about 16%, includes other smaller communities.

For a deeper look at francium's current standing, see the Last 12 Months and Executive Brief reports.