Clay‑based composites: A scientometric analysis of two decades of research

The expansion of clay-based composite research across polymer, ceramic, metal, geopolymer, cementitious, and hybrid systems has created a need for a quantitative synthesis of the field's intellectual structure and development trends. This study aimed to provide a comprehensive scientometric analysis of clay-based composites from 2006 to 2025. A total of 14,373 publications were retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection databases and analyzed using descriptive statistics and VOSviewer for network visualization. The results show that annual publication output increased from 333 documents in 2006–1143 in 2025, with materials science, chemistry, and engineering as the dominant subject areas. China, India, and the United States were the most productive countries, while the Ministry of Education of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences ranked first among contributing institutions. Keyword analysis identified nanocomposites, clay minerals, adsorption, and scanning electron microscopy as the most frequent terms, and the bibliographic coupling analysis generated seven distinct thematic clusters representing adsorption, biomedical applications, construction materials, polymer nanocomposites, and cementitious systems. The top-cited articles were dominated by review papers on geopolymer technology and polymer-layered silicate nanocomposites. This study provides a quantitative benchmark for researchers, editors, and funding bodies to understand the current state and future opportunities in clay-based composite research.