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The bibliometric profile of layered double hydroxide research reveals a field that, while still modest in absolute output, has matured considerably in its methodological sophistication. The corpus of 217 publications drawn from the Web of Science Core Collection represents a carefully curated subset of a much larger literature on LDH materials generally, since the search strategy deliberately excluded papers focused on degradation or adsorption in order to isolate studies genuinely concerned with antibiotic delivery and sustained release. This filtering decision matters scientifically: LDHs are extensively studied as sorbents for environmental remediation, and without such exclusions the analysis would conflate two distinct research communities that share a material platform but pursue entirely different objectives. The resulting dataset therefore offers a focused snapshot of researchers who intentionally exploit the interlayer anion exchange chemistry of these lamellar solids for therapeutic purposes rather than for pollutant capture.
The dominance of China, with 85 publications, and Italy, with 25, reflects complementary strengths rather than simple redundancy. Chinese groups have historically driven much of the fundamental materials chemistry of layered hydroxides, including refinements in co-precipitation, hydrothermal, and reconstruction methods that control layer charge density, interlayer spacing, and particle size, all of which govern how much antibiotic can be hosted and how quickly it escapes. Italian contributions, by contrast, have been closely associated with the biomedical translation of anionic clays, particularly in antitumoral and anti-inflammatory delivery, and that translational orientation naturally extends to antimicrobial applications where controlled release can reduce dosing frequency and limit the emergence of resistance at infection sites. The concentration of output in journals such as Applied Clay Science, the International Journal of Nanomedicine, and the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules illustrates the interdisciplinary position of the field: it sits at the intersection of clay mineralogy, nanomedicine, and macromolecular therapeutics, and authors must choose venues according to whether the novelty lies in the material synthesis or in the biological outcome.
The keyword co-occurrence findings, in which LDH, sustained release, and drug delivery emerge as central nodes, confirm that the community defines itself around the release kinetics problem rather than around any single antibiotic class. This is consistent with the underlying chemistry. The general formula of these materials, in which divalent and trivalent metal cations form positively charged hydroxide sheets balanced by interlayer anions and water, allows antibiotics bearing carboxylate, phosphate, or other anionic groups to be intercalated electrostatically. Once intercalated, release is governed by a combination of anion exchange with physiological counter-ions, partial dissolution of the layers, and diffusion through the particle periphery. Because the layers dissolve more readily in acidic media, the resulting carriers exhibit pronounced pH sensitivity, a property that is valuable at infected sites and in intracellular compartments such as phagolysosomes, where pH falls below that of blood and can be used to trigger preferential drug liberation. This same alkaline degradation behavior in gastric media, noted in the source literature, is a double-edged characteristic: it complicates oral delivery of acid-labile payloads yet can be exploited for gastric-responsive formulations.
The comparative framing against other carrier families provides useful context for interpreting why LDHs attract sustained attention despite their younger bibliography. Polyvinyl alcohol hydrogels are appreciated for biocompatibility and water processing but suffer from mechanical weakness and excessive hydrophilicity that accelerate burst release. Metal-organic frameworks offer exceptional internal surface area and tunable pore chemistry, yet concerns over long-term structural stability in aqueous biological environments, biodegradation products, and scalable cost remain active research questions. Mesoporous silica materials are the most clinically mature of the three comparators, but their typical pore dimensions constrain the size of molecules that can be loaded efficiently, and pore architecture influences release in ways that are difficult to tune independently. LDHs occupy a distinctive niche among these alternatives because their loading capacity is not limited by rigid pore windows; instead, the interlayer gallery can expand to accommodate bulky anionic species, and the layer charge can be adjusted through the divalent to trivalent cation ratio, giving formulators a direct handle on loading density and exchange kinetics. Their documented high anion exchange capacity, colloidal stability, and low toxicity in the reviewed literature further support this positioning.
The bibliometric emphasis on citation trends and thematic evolution also illuminates how the field has responded to the clinical backdrop of antimicrobial resistance. The 2022 GLASS report cited in the source article documents high resistance rates among common bacterial pathogens, and the parallel slowdown in the discovery of genuinely new antibiotic scaffolds has shifted attention toward maximizing the performance of existing drugs. Sustained-release delivery is one of the few strategies that improves the pharmacodynamic profile of an established antibiotic without requiring new chemistry at the molecular level. By flattening the sharp plasma spikes and troughs characteristic of immediate-release formulations, steady delivery maintains concentrations within the therapeutic window for longer periods, reduces the frequency of subinhibitory exposure that selects for resistant subpopulations, and improves patient adherence through fewer doses. In this sense, the bibliometric growth of LDH antibiotic delivery research can be read as a materials-science response to a pharmacological and epidemiological problem.
The methodological apparatus of the review itself deserves comment, because bibliometric analysis is increasingly used to map emerging biomedical materials fields and its limitations should be understood when interpreting the results. Restricting the corpus to English-language publications indexed in SCI-Expanded and ESCI introduces a selection bias toward established journals and anglophone or internationally publishing groups, which may undercount contributions from regions with strong domestic journals. The exclusion terms applied to remove degradation and adsorption studies, while scientifically justified, may also have removed hybrid papers that examined both adsorption and release. Nevertheless, the use of two complementary tools, VOSviewer for network visualization and the Bibliometrix package in R for descriptive and thematic statistics, strengthens the reliability of the mapping, since agreement between independent platforms on core findings such as country productivity and keyword clusters reduces the likelihood of software-specific artifacts. The reporting of total link strength as a measure of interaction intensity between nodes follows standard practice in science-mapping studies and allows readers to gauge not just the presence of a collaboration or co-occurrence but its relative weight within the network.
The identification of prominent authors, highly cited works, and funding sources within the 217-document corpus serves a practical function for newcomers to the field. Highly cited papers typically cluster around foundational demonstrations of antibiotic intercalation and release profiling, and tracing the citation flow from these works toward more recent publications reveals a thematic migration: early studies emphasized proof of concept for loading and release, while later work increasingly incorporates biological evaluation, including minimum inhibitory concentration assays, biofilm models, and cytocompatibility testing. The three-field plot analysis, which links countries, institutions, and keywords, exposes where interdisciplinary gaps persist, and the review’s framing of these gaps as opportunities for collaboration is consistent with the observation that no single discipline currently owns the problem. Materials chemists can optimize synthesis and interlayer architecture, microbiologists can define clinically relevant resistance and biofilm challenges, pharmacologists can model release and dosing, and toxicologists can establish biocompatibility thresholds, yet the bibliometric evidence suggests these communities have not fully converged.
The connection drawn between LDH drug delivery research and the Sustainable Development Goals reflects a broader trend in which bibliometric studies situate technical fields within global health priorities. Antimicrobial resistance is explicitly recognized in international frameworks as a threat to sustainable development, and delivery technologies that extend the useful life of existing antibiotics contribute to that agenda without demanding new molecular discovery. The emphasis on relevance to Sustainable Development Goals in the keyword and funding analysis indicates that funding agencies and journals increasingly reward work framed in these terms, which may in turn shape the direction of future publications toward applications with clear health-system relevance, such as wound dressings, implant coatings, and oral formulations for persistent infections.
Looking forward, the bibliometric evidence points toward several strategic directions that follow logically from the identified themes. First, the prominence of sustained release as a keyword suggests that quantitative release modeling, rather than qualitative demonstration, will be the differentiating contribution in coming years, since regulatory translation requires reproducible kinetics under physiologically relevant conditions. Second, the presence of gene therapy, biosensing, and ocular applications in the broader LDH literature signals that antimicrobial researchers may borrow formulation strategies from these adjacent domains, for example exploiting the positive surface charge that prolongs corneal residence to design mucoadhesive antimicrobial films. Third, the geographic concentration of output in two countries implies substantial untapped collaborative capacity, particularly in regions with high antimicrobial resistance burden but lower publication visibility in the indexed corpus, and international partnerships could align material development with the clinical epidemiology of resistance. Finally, the absence of prior bibliometric treatment of this field, which the review establishes as its central novelty, means that the 2025 dataset will serve as a baseline against which future updates can measure whether the field grows in volume, diversifies in geography, or shifts thematically from synthesis-oriented to clinically validated studies, and such longitudinal comparison is precisely the kind of insight that systematic bibliometric monitoring is designed to provide.
Subject of Research: Layered double hydroxides in sustained antibiotic delivery: a bibliometric review
Article Title: Layered double hydroxides in sustained antibiotic delivery: a bibliometric review
Article References: Verma, S. S., Varadavenkatesan, T., Selvaraj, R., & Vinayagam, R. (2026). Layered double hydroxides in sustained antibiotic delivery: a bibliometric review. Journal of Saudi Chemical Society, 30(5), Article 65. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44442-026-00120-7
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1007/s44442-026-00120-7
Keywords: Layered, double, hydroxides, sustained, antibiotic, delivery, bibliometric, review, scientific research
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Bethany Barker. (September 3, 2026). Layered double hydroxides in sustained antibiotic delivery: a bibliometric review. Scienmag. https://scienmag.com/layered-double-hydroxides-in-sustained-antibiotic-delivery-a-bibliometric-review/
Bethany Barker. “Layered double hydroxides in sustained antibiotic delivery: a bibliometric review.” Scienmag, 3 September 2026, https://scienmag.com/layered-double-hydroxides-in-sustained-antibiotic-delivery-a-bibliometric-review/. Accessed 3 September 2026.
Bethany Barker. “Layered double hydroxides in sustained antibiotic delivery: a bibliometric review.” Scienmag. September 3, 2026. https://scienmag.com/layered-double-hydroxides-in-sustained-antibiotic-delivery-a-bibliometric-review/
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Tags: antibioticantibiotic delivery mechanismsbibliometricBibliometric analysisbibliometric methodology in materials scienceChinese and Italian research contributionscontrolled drug delivery systemsdeliverydoubleenvironmental remediation vs therapeutic applicationshydroxidesinterlayer anion exchange chemistrylamellar solids in medicineLayeredlayered double hydroxidesLDH materials researchmaterials chemistry optimizationreviewScientific Researchsustainedsustained antibiotic release
