Lawrencium

Lawrencium (Lr) — 10-Year Trends

As of 2026-09-11 · the last 10 years

Lawrencium’s research intensity currently sits at about 55% of its own all-time peak, a level that has held steady since the window began, even as the element’s all-time high occurred in 2010, just before this period.

Research intensity ran from about 58% of the element's own all-time peak in 2016 to about 55% in 2026 — a rise to a mid-window peak followed by a fall back, and the all-time peak (2010) lies before this window. Over the same span its share of research attention across all elements held steady. Among the 118 elements, lawrencium has one of the smaller research literatures of any element.

The number of papers involving the element rose from about 40 in 2016 to about 62 in 2025 (1.55x). 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 lawrencium research remains the Synthesis and Decay of Superheavy Elements and Heavy-Ion Collision Physics community. In this field, lawrencium is a minor presence in a much larger community, with under 1% of its papers involving the element. This community accounts for about 58% of the element's recent research, a share that has declined from about 68% in the previous period. Key work includes a 2024 paper on relativistic coupled-cluster calculations of electron affinity and ionization potentials, cited about 7 times, and a 2021 study on ab initio calculations of the spectrum, cited about 20 times.

A significant shift is occurring toward Actinide Chemistry and Nuclear Fuel Materials. Here, lawrencium is also a minor presence, with under 1% of the community's papers involving it. However, its share of lawrencium-specific research has risen sharply to about 33% of the element's recent work, up from about 10% previously. This growth is anchored by recent theoretical work, such as a 2025 model for bond capacity electronegativity across elements Z = 1–103, cited about 6 times, and a 2023 investigation of the ground and excited states of LrF and LrO, cited about 9 times.

A third emerging area is Computational Materials Science: Electronic Structure, Phase Transitions and Machine Learning Potentials. Lawrencium is a minor presence here as well, with under 1% of the community's focus on the element. Its share of lawrencium research has risen from zero to about 8% of the element's recent work. This is represented by a 2024 case study on the periodic table, cited once.

Overall, the element's literature is consolidating away from its traditional synthesis and decay focus toward broader actinide chemistry and computational modeling. The remainder of the research, which held about 21% of the share in the earlier period, has declined to zero in the current period.

For a deeper look at the current standing of lawrencium research, see the Last 12 Months and Executive Brief reports.