The unbalanced performance and regional differences in scientific and technological collaboration in the field of solar cells

This study attempts to explore collaborations in the field of solar cell science and technology, focusing on the productivity and citations of papers and patents at the global and country levels. This study finds that most papers and patents are collaborative efforts, however, the rate of collaboration is higher for papers. In particular, international collaboration is not common in patents. In terms of performance, international collaborations have shown the best performance overall if looking at trends that cover the 30 years from 1980 to 2009, but the performance of single-authored papers has been better in the more recent ten-year period, 2000–2009. At the country level, we found that most countries have higher rates of international collaboration with greater numbers in papers and patents. Asian countries such as Japan, Taiwan and India have significant citation performance with high ratios for domestic collaboration; the rates are even greater than the average ratio for international collaboration.