Breast cancer (BC) is an important cause of cancer-related death in the world. As a subtype of BC with the worst prognosis, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a serious threat to human life and health. In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of research aimed at designing and developing nanomaterials for the diagnosis and treatment of TNBC. The purpose of this study was to comprehensively evaluate the current status and trend of the application of nanomaterials in TNBC through bibliometric analysis. Studies focusing on nanomaterials and cancer were searched from the Web of Science core collection (WOSCC) database, and relevant literature meeting the inclusion criteria was selected for inclusion in the study. VOSviewer and CiteSpace were used to perform bibliometric and visual analysis of the included publications. A total of 2338 studies were included. Annual publications have increased from 2010 to 2024. China, the United States and India were the leading countries in the field, accounting for 66.1%, 11.5% and 7.2% of publications, respectively. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Li Yaping were the most influential institutions and authors, respectively. Journal of Controlled Release was considered the most productive journal. Cancer Research was considered to be the most co-cited journal. Drug delivery and anti-cancer mechanisms related to nanomaterials were considered to be the most widely studied aspects, and green synthesis and anti-cancer mechanisms were also recent research hotspots. In this study, the characteristics of publications were summarized, and the most influential countries, institutions, authors, journals, hot spots and trends in the application of nanomaterials in cancer were identified. These findings provide valuable insights into the current state and future direction of this dynamic field.