Electrophoretic Deposited Quartz Powder-Assisted Growth of Multicrystalline Silicon

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

See the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers:

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript (ID: Crystals-1654720). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer's comments are as flowing:

Responds to the reviewer's comments:

Reviewer:

(1) Request: Please specify the providers for the used materials and methods (company, city, country).

Response:

Thank you very much for pointing out this problem, we apologize for our negligence of details. we specify the providers for the used materials and methods such as page 2, line 80; page 3, line 102; page 3, line 104; page 3, line 105; page 3, line 110.

 

(2) Request: Please choose to write in the main text just one of the expression Figure 3 or Fig. 3 (for example), not both. I suggest that the studies must be completed with atomic force microscopy, especially to highlight the early stage of growth, the defects and the grain boundary. The contrast of the images presented in Figure 5 is very weak. Please provide images of better quality, with a better contrast (like is presented below).

Response:

Thanks to the reviewers for helping us find these problems in time, I chose the expression "Fig.3" uniformly.

I strongly agree with the reviewer that atomic force microscopy is appropriate to study defects and grain boundaries in the early stages of crystal growth. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the city I live in is under lockdown, so it is very difficult to test samples using atomic force microscopy. Can we replace the original fig.4 with another group of early growth pictures of Mc-Si ingot?

As the reviewer mentioned, Fig.5 is weak. We partially enlarged Fig.5a and 5c and replaced Fig.5b.

(3) Request: In addition, an in-depth proof reading would be necessary, since the manuscript has some typing errors. Over all it is a nice and elaborated paper and can be accepted after the changes and additional investigations are made.

Response:

Due to the typing and grammar problems in our paper, we apologize for the impact caused to the reviewers. We asked a colleague who is good at English to help us with further proofreading. such as page 1, line 15-16; page 1, line 39; page 2, line 55; …… Thanks to the reviewers for their recognition of our work.

The detailed revised manuscript is attached.
I would be happy to make any further changes that may be required.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The present article reports on the effect of electrophoretic deposition of quartz layer after annealing on the quality of multicrystalline silicon crystals. It presents interesting results for the Crystals MDPI magazine, and after some improvements it can be considered for publication:

(1) Please verify some typos along the paper text such as "...wafer by electrophoresis, " in page 1, line 15; "...small grains, " page 1, line 39;

(2) A point very important to inform to the reader at the end of the introduction topic is the novelty of research paper concern the related literature. Please insert this at the last paragraph of the introduction topic; 

(3) Please inform the details (manufacturer, equipment model, etc.) of the material characterization equipments (SEM, optical microscopy and PL microscopy) in the experimental topic;

(4) The discussion presented in the Results and discussion topic is totally presented without to cite one reference from literature, i.e., there is no comparison or support of other related research. Please improve this. 

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers:

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript (ID: Crystals-1654720). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer's comments are as flowing:

Responds to the reviewer's comments:

Reviewer:

(1) Please verify some typos along the paper text such as "...wafer by electrophoresis, " in page 1, line 15; "...small grains, " page 1, line 39;

Response:

Thank you very much for pointing out this problem, we apologize for our negligence of details. We verify some typos along the paper text such page 1, line 15-16; page 1, line 39; page 2, line 55; …… (The detailed revised manuscript is attached.)

(2) A point very important to inform to the reader at the end of the introduction topic is the novelty of research paper concern the related literature. Please insert this at the last paragraph of the introduction topic;

Response:

As the reviewer pointed out that is very important to inform to the reader at the end of the introduction topic is the novelty of research paper concern the related literature. We added instructions in page 2, line 66-75.

(3) Please inform the details (manufacturer, equipment model, etc.) of the material characterization equipments (SEM, optical microscopy and PL microscopy) in the experimental topic;

Response:

These details are indeed very important for the repeatability of the experiment, and we inform the details (manufacturer, equipment model, etc.) of the material characterization equipments (SEM, optical microscopy and PL microscopy) in the experimental topic, such as page 2, line 80; page 3, line 102; page 3, line 104; page 3, line 105; page 3, line 110.

(4) The discussion presented in the Results and discussion topic is totally presented without to cite one reference from literature, i.e., there is no comparison or support of other related research. Please improve this.

Response:

We fully agree with the reviewer's opinion. In the Results and discussion, we deleted page 9, lines 234 - 239 and added the comparison with Trempa et al's conclusion (page 9, lines 244 - 248).

The detailed revised manuscript is attached.
I would be happy to make any further changes that may be required.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors performed the requested corrections very well, it is recommended the publication of the paper.