• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.23-53
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• 2023

In this review paper, previous studies on layered double hydroxides (LDHs) published in the Korean Citation Index (KCI) were examined to investigate a research trend for LDHs in Korea. Since the first publication in 2002, 160 papers on LDHs have been published until January 2023. Among the 31 academic fields, top 5 fields appeared in the order of chemical engineering, chemistry, materials engineering, environmental engineering, and physics. The chemical engineering shows the highest record of published paper (71 papers) while around 10 papers have been published in the other four fields. All papers were reclassified into 15 research fields based on the industrial and academic purposes of using LDHs. The top 5 in these fields are in order of environmental purification materials, polymer catalyst materials, battery materials, pharmaceutical/medicinal materials, and basic physicochemical properties. These findings suggest that researches on the applications of LDH materials in the academic fields of chemical engineering and chemistry for the improvement of their functions such as environmental purification materials, polymer catalysts, and batteries have been being most actively conducted. The application of LDHs for cosmetic and agricultural purposes and for developing environmental sensors is still at the beginning of research. Considering a market-potential and high-efficiency-eco-friendly trend, however, it will deserve our attention as emerging application fields in the future. All reclassified papers were summarized in our tables and a supplementary file, including information on applied materials, key results, characteristics and synthesis methods of LDHs used. We expect that our findings of overall trends in LDH research in Korea can help design future researches with LDHs and suggest policies for resources and energies as well as environments efficiently.