Insights into the quantitative structure-activity relationship for ionic liquids: a bibliometric mapping analysis

Environmental protection and sustainability is the development goal that countries all over the world are pursuing. Ionic liquids (ILs), as a new type of green material, have a great application prospect. And the quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) is significant for the research of ILs. To better understand the role played by QSAR in the research of ILs, 4139 literatures published in the WOS database from 2002 to 2022 were used for bibliometric analysis, and different types of knowledge maps were mapped to obtain the current status and trends of IL research applied QSAR. The distribution pattern of the literature output chronology, country, institution, author cooperation, and major source journals can be obtained through the research of the distribution of literature. Through core literature, dual-map overlays, and evolutionary path analysis, the research knowledge base was obtained mainly including ionic liquid toxicological properties research, environmental protection and sustainability, ionic liquid design, and mild steel corrosion inhibition; through the co-occurrence and evolution of keywords, the current research hotspots are basic properties of ILs, corrosion inhibition of mild steel, the effect of toxicity on the environment, QSAR modeling methods, solvent application of ILs, and drug design.

Automated summary

Ionic liquids (ILs), as a new type of green material, have great prospects in environmental protection and sustainability. This study analyzed 4139 literature published in the WOS database from 2002 to 2022 to understand the role of quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) in IL research. The analysis included bibliometric analysis, knowledge mapping, and analysis of research hotspots. The results showed that the research areas included IL toxicological properties, environmental protection, IL design, and corrosion inhibition. The current research hotspots focused on IL properties, corrosion inhibition, toxicity to the environment, QSAR modeling, IL solvent applications, and drug design.