Nanomaterials and Cross-Cutting Technologies for Fostering Smart Electrochemical Biosensors in the Detection of Chemical Warfare Agents
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In this paper, the author reviews some few articles about development of electrochemical sensors based on screen-printed electrodes (SPEs) and/or nanomaterials for the determination of warfare agents. The manuscript is clear and well-structured and the approach is interesting. However, the references included are scarce especially taking into account the great current development of sensors based on SPEs. When the words “nerve agent screen-printed electrode” are searching in Google Scholar, since 2016, nearly 4000 documents appear and when the terms “warfare nerve agent screen-printed electrode” are searching, also since 2016, more than 300 documents appear. Therefore, the 34 references included in this review seem few. Moreover, from those 34 references, 19 are signed by the author of this review.
Apart from this, other minor comments are the following:
- Lines 51-52: two “however” too near. Change one of them by a synonym.
- In Figure 1, it would be interesting to indicate the species (product, substrate, both) that can be detected in the possible approaches.
- The Figure named as “Figure 4” is the “Figure 3D”.
- Lines 282-285: some references is missed to illustrate correctly the paragraph.
- Figure 5 is not referred in the text.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper provides an overview of the development of electrochemical biosensors developed by exploiting nanomaterials and cross-cutting technologies for the fabrication of smart and sensitive electrochemical biosensors for the detection of chemical warfare agents.
Although the topic is very interesting and current, the work does not include new research in this area and only gives an overview of already published research from same group of authors in this area. The author primarily reviews already published works and out of 34 references the 19 of them are from same authors.
In accordance with the mentioned above, the proposed paper is a review paper, with the list of literature references giving a not so broad overview of research in this area. For a review paper in the journal Applied Sciences, it is necessary to expand the list of references and significantly improve the entire paper. The paper contains a significant number of typographical errors, such as a large number of mistakes with a double and a triple spaces between words. The English language needs to be improved. The paper could be published, given the interesting topic, with major revision.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The review has been improved but the Figure 1 has not been modified.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
I apologize for the mistake,
please see the attachment with the correct Figure 1 updated.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have corrected the work according to the recommendations and I suggest publishing the manuscript in a corrected form.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
I apologise for the mistake, in the revised version I uploaded the correct version of the revised Figure 1.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
