Abstract The progress of textile technology continually drives the development of the textile product market, making the clarification of its research trajectory a key priority in the field. This paper aims to map the research status, core themes, and future trends of textile technology during 2005–2025, and specifically to elucidate the profound reasons for the field’s recent research growth entering a plateau after a period of high output. The study adopts the bibliometric method, using 1,365 papers retrieved from the Web of Science database as a sample, and employs CiteSpace for a systematic analysis of keywords, authors, institutions, and disciplines. The results show that the field has formed a well-established research cluster centered on materials science and engineering, with representative institutions including Lodz University of Technology and Donghua University. Research topics are highly concentrated on nanotechnology and surface modification, dedicated to enhancing fabric functionality, such as strengthening mechanical properties and increasing antibacterial capacity. At the same time, emerging themes such as smart textiles and silver nanoparticles have concentratedly emerged since 2023, reflecting a transformation demand towards intelligence and functionalization. Crucially, evidence at the institutional and disciplinary levels indicates that cooperation and knowledge integration between cutting-edge knowledge streams such as artificial intelligence, biology, and ecology and the aforementioned mainstream materials science cluster are significantly insufficient. The structural divide between the mainstream and the cutting-edge is the fundamental reason for the field’s stagnation following a period of rapid growth. Future research emphasis should shift from incremental optimization within material science to breaking disciplinary boundaries and fostering deep interdisciplinary integration.
Liu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.