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• Bibliometrics overview of ZEB publications. • Draw of the collaboration networks from ZEB research publications. • Brought out thematic trend of the development ZEB over the time. • Discussions of the main challenges and solutions for ZEB studies. Zero Energy Building (ZEB) is gaining more attention as a solution to significantly mitigate the environment concerns. However, a bibliometric analysis of the topic, a very useful method to analyze the database of published publications and reviews, is lacking. Especially, to provide when and how this concept has been brought out, insights into the state-of-art technology, the findings of the collaboration networks and the challenges of ZEB. To address this gap, in this paper, ZEB studies have been reviewed using multiple perspectives and analytical tools, such as VOSviewer and Biblioshiny to analyze the collaboration networks and the thematic trends of ZEB publications. The original data was retrieved in Scopus, a total of 1051 documents including research articles and reviews published from 1976 to 2020. The analysis of the number of publications over the years shows that the development of Zero energy building research has gone through three stages: a slow development period from 1076 to 1999, followed by a development from 2000 to 2010 and finally a rapid development from 2011 to 2020. The study also reveals different rankings, including the most widely collaborated scholars, the most cited scholars, the most published countries, etc. Therein, the United State, United Kingdom and China have the most research on ZEB. Based on the analysis of co-occurrence network and evolution of thematic keywords, it is found that energy efficiency and life cycle assessment (LCA) are the main challenges for the achievement of ZEB target. Finally, these challenges have been discussed and solutions provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]