Strongly Confining Light with Air-Mode Cavities in Inverse Rod-Connected Diamond Photonic Crystals

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Major revision

Comments
         The authors reported the Strongly Confining Light with Air-mode Cavities in Inverse Rod-Connected Diamond Photonic Crystals.

Overall, the work may be of interest to a broader audience. However, the authors should address the following points outlined below to improve scientific quality. After the suggested revisions are carefully addressed, this work may be considered for publication

1. The abstract is too short.  it should clear and informative with important highlights. methods and results
2. Line number 32 removes the sentence Here, we focus on investigating ....Relate your work with previous research and highlight the novelty of your work in this line. As you already mentioned again in line 48. 
3. All the references used most of them are too old. Kindly revise references with the latest literature review. 
4. I suggest to cite this refEnhancement of thermoelectric performance of a nanoribbon made of lattice  Mir Waqas Alam et al 2019 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 31 485303 https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-648X/ab3bf6 

Author Response

Please find the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper “Strongly Confining Light with Air-mode Cavities in Inverse Rod-Connected Diamond Photonic Crystals” focuses on photonic crystals with an inverse rod-connected diamond structure modeling and studying of various shapes and sizes defects effect on some parameters. The authors used adequate and proven approaches to modeling, so the results obtained have sufficient reliability and accuracy. The text of the manuscript requires minor improvements: the removal of typos, verification of graph signatures and improvement of the quality of graphs. There are also some questions to work:

• The authors claim that they have optimized the relative air-rod radius (r/au) of the inverse RCD structures to maximize their full PBG. In my opinion, it is necessary to explain in more detail in the text the strategy and optimization results, which are currently missing (only optimal values are indicated).
• It is necessary to explain in the text why such a wide range of defect forms is chosen.
• In the case of many parameters, for example “optimized location”, the authors refer to their work [https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/116/64007], where some effects were studied only for spherical defects. Moreover, in that study a differed refractive index of 3.3:1 was chosen. It is necessary to indicate in the manuscript the admissibility of using refinement parameters from the previous study.
• The second paragraph of the conclusions most likely refers to the discussion of results.

After clarifications and correction of comments, this manuscript may be accepted in the journal Crystals.

Author Response

Please find the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf