An Investigation of the Interaction between Science and Technology from Literatures of Giant Magnetoresistance

This study focused on the interaction between science and technology of Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) from both scientific literatures and patent documents. The sample data included 1603 nonpatent references (NPRs) from 1030 patents and 160 patent documents cited by 3287 scientific literatures. The result shows that the scientific literature amounts to 10 percent of all references cited by technical documents. On the other hand, only 4 percent of the scientific literature had cited the patent documents. The time lags between patent application and paper publication from the NPRs are mostly within 4 years. However, some patents which have been issued 10 years ago were still cited by scientific literatures. Subjects including physics, engineering, chemistry and computer are mostly cited by GMR patent documents, while technologies related to semiconductor devices, magnets inductances and transformers are mostly cited by GMR scientific literatures.