Research on Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPPs) at Microwave Frequencies: a Bibliometric Review

In recent years, Spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) have been studied at microwave (MW) frequencies. The Spoof SPPs can be supported by plasmonic metamaterials, which are usually periodic structures decorated on metallic surfaces. Due to the high field confinement property, the Spoof SPP-based transmission lines (TLs) and devices do not suffer from the compactness limitation of the conventional MW technology and have less mutual coupling (MC), thus providing an alternative for future integrated circuits. In particular, we briefly introduce Spoof SPPs and their applications in MW frequencies. We analyze the Spoof SPP research scientifically and systematically and display the research status and possible development trend in this field concisely and intuitively, which provide the theoretical basis for the in-depth study of Spoof SPPs for scientific research. Finally, the future directions and potential applications of MW Spoof SPPs are discussed. This study uses CiteSpace software to conduct a quantitative analysis of 581 articles from the Web of Science Core Collection database in 2004–2020. Over the past 16 years, many scholars and experts have done extensive research on Spoof SPPs. As the first bibliometric review of the Spoof SPPs, this study will help researchers to identify research trends, topics, major publications, and influential scientists in the field.