Measuring Thermal Diffusivity of Azoheteroarene Thin Layers by Photothermal Beam Deflection and Photothermal Lens Methods
, Humberto Cabrera 4, Dariusz Chomicki 1, Dariusz Dziczek 1, Oksana Kharchenko 5,6, Peng Song 7,8, Junyan Liu 7,8, Andreas D. Wieck 2 and Michal Pawlak 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper reports on the measurement technique of thermal diffusivity of azobenzene thin films. They compared photothermal beam deflection (PBS) and thermal lens (TLs) and found that thermal diffusivity determined by both methods was consistent. TLs has the advantage of simple use without the thickness information of thin film. Here are the comments to be solved prior to acceptance.
Which thin film is shown in Figure 5? The authors should also show the results for the other thin films.
In Figure 6, the results of the other two should also be shown. Are there any differences in fitting results between materials?
Why is the thermal diffusivity different for different substituents of azobenzene?
There are unnecessary hyphens and capital letters in the text that should be corrected.
There are unnecessary hyphens and capital letters in the text that should be corrected.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript written by Mikaeeli et al. studies some azo-polymers by PBDS and PLS obtaining consistent data from both techniques. The overall merit of the work seems to be quite low due to the well stablished theory and experimental setups they are using. The application on this type of transparent layers seems the most relevant outcome of the manuscript.
Despite the new application of the mentioned methods, there are several concerns that should be fulfilled before publication.
As first comment, the authors are talking about azobenzene derivatives on some derivatives which are not structurally azobenzenes, they should be correctly labeled as they are azoheteroarenes.
The preparation of the layer polymers must be described properly, but any information is given in the actual manuscript. Some information on the load of azoheteroarene, (this can be inferred from figure 4), the yield of the preparation and the polymer size must be commented due to their importance in terms of reproducibility.
The azoheteroarene derivatives are photochemically active under the supposed light irradiation used in both procedures, thus, the photophysical properties of the dye or polymer should be at least commented in terms of absorption maxima.
In relation to that, the photoactive molecules included in the polymer could isomerize depending on the irradiation conditions. Some explanation on the irradiation time scale used for the experiments and it possible impact on the isomerization should be added to the manuscript. This could be crucial for the optical absorption coefficient, which can notably vary.
Looking into the presented information, how the authors calculate the errors of alpha1 in table 2 should be at least commented for other authors using the same models.
Apart of these major concerns there are some minor things that will be enumerated below.
1- In the correspondence section, the last [email protected] should be removed.
2- Cis and trans referring the isomers must use italic font.
3- In page 3, section 2.2. “The collected signal is dependent on the thermos-optical properties …” should be corrected removing the extra s.
-- Section 4 is too short and the results does not have that much attention from the authors.
4- There is a missing call to figure 7 which is not present on the manuscript.
5- The references are slightly out dated.
English is in a good quality but there are some parts in section 4 that should be improved.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have answered and better explained all the major concerns expressed by the reviewers and now the manuscript does not have the flaws of the previous version.
The english flaws have been corrected.
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have responded each of my comments. I therefore recommend for publication.
