Nanotech research soars, but benefits still lag

China's nanotechnology field is developing at an unprecedented pace, but it still needs a boost in turning research into the reality of producing groundbreaking works, China's top scientists said.

In 2016, Chinese scientists produced about 33 percent of the world's total science papers on nanotechnology, a fivefold increase since 1997, according to a collaborated white paper published on Tuesday by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China's National Center for Nanoscience and Technology and Springer Nature, an international science journal publisher.

China also has become the world's largest nano-related patent contributor since 2008, with 209,344 patent applications over the past two decades. This is twice as many as that of the United States, the second-largest contributor, the white paper said.