Abstract: This paper explores a framework to profile research patterns for New and Emerging Science and Technology (NES&T), and applies it to Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC), a promising NES&T. Such work is done via “tech mining” to capture key technological attributes, leading actors, and networks. The result shows that DSSC research is an interdisciplinary field, with increasing cooperation among different levels. Japan is notable not only in the number of papers but also for considerable involvement of the corporate sector in research. In contrast, China, as the second country in quantity, shows an obvious imbalance with few industrially associated authors, limited international cooperation, and low citations. Research profiling, as illustrated here, can inform technology strategies, and science and technology policies. I. INTRODUCTION New and emerging sciences and technologies (“NES&T”) are characterized by a challenging combination of great uncertainty and (hopefully) great potential. At an early stage it is unclear if and how their potential might be realized. However, researchers and technologists, R&D managers, funding agencies, and policy makers need to understand the development and diffusion of these technologies to identify and guide likely future development paths [1]. This paper provides a framework to profile NES&T research activities, and we apply the framework to Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells, a promising NES&T. Nowadays, nanotechnology is playing an increasing role in the development of sensors. Solar cells represent an especially exciting opportunity for high-impact applications benefiting from “nano” attributes. “Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells” (“DSSC”), invented by O’Regan and Grätzel in 1991 [2], constitute perhaps the most promising and, so far, the most efficient of all solar cells that employ nanotechnology [3]. A wide variety of nanomaterials with novel properties have found broad application in DSSC. Although the commercialization of DSSC is still in its infancy, many technical papers anticipate fascinating prospects for DSSC. However, to the best of our knowledge, no one has “profiled” the DSSC literature – i.e., characterized the overall R&D patterns. To do so, we adapt the tech mining approach and selected technology management methods, along with suitable visualization tools. The paper starts with the approach and data in Part 2. Parts 3, 4, and 5 illustrate the R&D profile for DSSC at three levels – respectively, overall, national, and organizational. Part 6 presents our conclusions. II.APPROACH AND DATA: A: Contextual framework of the paper: NES&T have some obvious characteristics. First, plenty of scientists believe in the future of the NES&T, and apply themselves to advance it, so such technologies often show accelerating activity and rapid development. Second, NES&T R&D is often multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary, as is the case for nano science and engineering [4]. Third, because of the first two characteristics, NES&T often calls for cooperative development, which could be among different countries, institutions, or researchers. When we explore the R&D activity for a given NES&T, we will address these three characteristics as indicators. Profiling R&D activities can be done at different levels. For instance, from the overall level, we could get the whole picture of how interdisciplinary a given NES&T is; from the national level, it’s easy to tell the international collaboration networks; from the organizational level, we could pay attention to who are key players in this NES&T field. Thus, we profile the R&D activities from all three perspectives. Understanding the characteristics and levels above, we make a matrix, with the three characteristics discussed as the abscissa, and the three levels as the ordinate, shown in Table 1. Some possible research content for profiling the R&D activities for a chosen NES&T is listed in the table. TABLE I: RESEARCH FRAMEWORK Rapid Development Interdisciplinarity Abundant Cooperation Overall Overall trends Science overlay maps Trends in cooperation National Quality and quantity measures Research content maps Co-author maps Organizational Leading organizations Research content maps Co-author maps In this paper, we apply this framework to DSSC. Actually, we just list a few research angles we use here. There could be others with respect to each of the characteristics and levels noted. Guo, Y., Huang, L., and Porter, A.L., Profiling Research Patterns for a New and Emerging Science and Technology: Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells, The Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy, Atlanta, 2009 (October). Profiling Research Patterns for a New and Emerging Science and Technology: Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Ying Guo 1,2 , Lu Huang 1,2 , Alan L. Porter 2,3