As of 2026-09-11 · the last 10 years
Research intensity sits at about 37% of nickel's all-time peak, a level that has steadily declined since 2016, though the element's share of global scientific attention has held steady.
Research intensity ran from about 44% of the element's own all-time peak in 2016 to about 37% in 2026 — a steady decline, and the all-time peak (1978) lies before this window. Over the same span its share of research attention across all elements held steady. Among the 118 elements, nickel has a larger-than-average research literature.
The number of papers involving the element rose from about 34,177 in 2016 to about 80,697 in 2025 (2.36x). That matches the growth of the literature as a whole over the same years: the general tide of scientific output, not a surge specific to the element.
The material research communities where nickel plays a defined role are relatively stable in their composition, with three distinct areas accounting for roughly a quarter of the element's recent work. The largest of these is work on Nickel Foam and Hydroxide Electrocatalysts for Alkaline Water Splitting, which makes up about 11.6% of nickel's recent research. This community focuses on nickel foam substrates, hydroxides, and phosphides as catalysts for oxygen and hydrogen evolution in alkaline electrolysis, with distinctive work on nickel iron and nickel hydroxide systems. Nickel is one strand of a broader community, with about 11% of its papers involving nickel. A key recent contribution is a 2025 paper in Science on a polyoxometalated metal-organic framework superstructure for stable water oxidation, cited over 290 times.
The second major area is Nickel-Based Single-Crystal Superalloys in Turbine Applications, representing about 11.0% of recent nickel research. These papers focus on the microstructure, corrosion behavior, and mechanical properties of nickel-based superalloys, specifically single-crystal variants used in high-temperature turbine blades. Nickel is a minor presence in a much larger community, with about 7% of its papers involving nickel. The most cited work in this area is a 2016 review in Acta Materialia on high entropy alloys, cited over 9,000 times, while a 2023 review in Progress in Materials Science on additive manufacturing of these superalloys has been cited over 500 times.
The third significant community is Nickel Photoredox Catalysis for Reductive Cross-Coupling, accounting for about 7.9% of recent research. Here, nickel acts as a catalyst in dual photoredox systems to enable reductive cross-coupling of aryl and alkyl halides. Nickel is a minor presence in a much larger community, with about 5% of its papers involving nickel. A foundational 2020 paper in ACS Catalysis on nickel-catalyzed enantioselective reductive cross-coupling has been cited over 610 times, while a 2024 study in Nature Catalysis on nickel-catalyzed alkene dicarbofunctionalization has been cited over 100 times.
Overall, the composition of nickel's research literature has remained steady, with the "Other research communities" band holding about 69.5% of the total. For a deeper look at nickel's current standing, see the Last 12 Months and Executive Brief reports.
What changed in the past year: new papers, shifting applications, emerging collaborators. See the momentum over a shorter window than the decade view.
Personal →See recent trends — Personal.
A by-topic status read of what changed and what's new — built for decision-makers, not search engines. Citation clusters, emerging applications, and the papers that matter most.
Professional →See the executive read — Professional.
These are the nine that matter most. There are more — browse all of them free.
Found one worth keeping? A free account remembers it for you, so you're not re-finding it every visit.
Showing Nickel's three strongest connections. Personal opens the slider and the whole 118-element graph.