Tailoring Structure: Current Design Strategies and Emerging Trends to Hierarchical Catalysts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Although the manuscript is well-organized and consists of some lengthy tables which could be useful for some of the readers, it seems to lack novelty, significance, and potential impact, and also lacks an in-depth treatment of the topic. The comments provided below highlights some of the shortcomings in the manuscript. Addressing the following concerns could possibly help strengthen the manuscript and make it more useful and impactful.

 1.    The manuscript lacks novelty, because many review papers, rather more in-depth, and some quite latest, are already published on hierarchical materials including hierarchical catalysts. A few of those published reviews, as examples, are enlisted below:

·         Li, X., Yu, J., & Jaroniec, M. (2016). Hierarchical photocatalysts. Chemical Society Reviews, 45(9), 2603-2636.

·         Fang, M., Dong, G., Wei, R., & Ho, J. C. (2017). Hierarchical nanostructures: design for sustainable water splitting. Advanced Energy Materials, 7(23), 1700559.

·         Cong, L., Xie, H., & Li, J. (2017). Hierarchical structures based on two‐dimensional nanomaterials for rechargeable lithium batteries. Advanced Energy Materials, 7(12), 1601906.

·         Blaker, J. J., Lee, K. Y., & Bismarck, A. (2011). Hierarchical composites made entirely from renewable resources. Journal of Biobased Materials and Bioenergy, 5(1), 1-16.

·         Stein, A., Rudisill, S. G., & Petkovich, N. D. (2014). Perspective on the influence of interactions between hard and soft templates and precursors on morphology of hierarchically structured porous materials. Chemistry of Materials, 26(1), 259-276.

·         Sun, M., Chen, C., Chen, L., & Su, B. (2016). Hierarchically porous materials: synthesis strategies and emerging applications. Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering, 10(3), 301-347.

·         Karger-Kocsis, J., Mahmood, H., & Pegoretti, A. (2020). All-carbon multi-scale and hierarchical fibers and related structural composites: A review. Composites Science and Technology, 186, 107932.

·         Zhou, X. L., Zhang, H., Shao, L. M., Lü, F., & He, P. J. (2021). Preparation and application of hierarchical porous carbon materials from waste and biomass: A review. Waste and Biomass Valorization, 12(4), 1699-1724.

·         Schrettl, S., Schulte, B., & Frauenrath, H. (2016). Templating for hierarchical structure control in carbon materials. Nanoscale, 8(45), 18828-18848.

·         Liu, R., Hou, L., Yue, G., Li, H., Zhang, J., Liu, J., ... & Zhao, Y. (2022). Progress of fabrication and applications of electrospun hierarchically porous nanofibers. Advanced Fiber Materials, 1-27.

·         Jiang, L., Zhou, H., Yang, H., Sun, N., Huang, Z., & Pang, H. (2022). Applications of hierarchical metal–organic frameworks and their derivatives in electrochemical energy storage and conversion. Journal of Energy Storage, 55, 105354.

·         Wang, P., Xuan, J., Zhang, R., Zhang, H., Wang, Q., Wang, H., ... & Zhang, L. (2022). Hierarchically Structured Components: Design, Additive Manufacture, and Their Energy Applications. Advanced Materials Technologies, 7(3), 2100672.

·         Davis, M. E. (2002). Ordered porous materials for emerging applications. Nature, 417(6891), 813-821.

2.    The manuscript lacks significance and potential impact, because many such reviews--rather more in-depth and/or comprehensive--are already available in the literature, some of which are enlisted above. The present manuscript does not seem to offer significant contribution to the field.

3.    The review does not provide much insight into the topic. For example, it lacks an in-depth treatment of the synthesis mechanisms of hierarchical structures so as to provide an elucidation of the underlying material science/chemistry, which could be a useful knowledge to rationally design or tailor hierarchical structures. Currently, the manuscript is mostly a plain narration of the literature, e.g., Researcher X synthesized material Y whose performance was Z, and so on.  

4.    Line 66-67: Saying that the review summarizes the “most recent” advances, is a bit subjective statement. It would be better to be more specific, e.g., mentioning the range of years out of which the papers have been included in this review. Also, which keywords were used to search the relevant literature, was there any criterion to shortlist the papers? On which basis certain studies have been included, while certain studies have been excluded (if any) from this review?

5.    The manuscript needs to be proofread by an expert for the correction of its technical writing/language and grammar.

Author Response

Authors thank the Reviewer for accepting to review our review and for their valuable comments and suggestions, which were followed to improve the manuscript as detailed in the uploaded file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The present review is devoted to the specifics of the preparation and study of nanostructured catalysts for photochemical transformations.

The review is quite complete.

I note that the work presents a large number of studies on this topic, considers a large number of methods for obtaining catalysts based on titanium oxide.

The reviewer has one remark:

So about 50 sources in References were published earlier than 2016. To prove the relevance of the topic and the importance of the review, you can provide more relevant references in the introduction.

Author Response

Authors thank the Reviewer for his positive appreciation of our review. Their suggestions were followed to improve the manuscript as detailed in the uploaded file.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript addresses a review for the current design strategies and emerging trends to hierarchical catalysts. It covers a suitable research gap within the literature.

Added value of the paper: This is unclear. The main benefits of the review should be added at the end of the introduction. The authors set that they could be used for several applications but this remains too general.

Quality of tables is very good with substantiated references.

Would it be worth comparing the performance with all the template approaches? There is a significant difference in the results as for surface area and catalytic activity.

Tables 1 shows activity, however this is not in the same base for discussion in all the experiments showed. Could this be converted? However in Table 2, conversion is specified (Please confirm if it is conversion as it is unclear).

Conclusions match the results and discussion. However more specific details and recommendations for applications could be considered.

Author Response

Authors thank the Reviewer for accepting to review our review and for their valuable comments and suggestions, which were followed to improve the manuscript as detailed in the uploaded file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Because the authors have largely addressed the issues which were previously highlighted in the reviewer's comments, and the manuscript is in a better shape now, I would recommend its acceptance in present form.