Protective Cr Coatings with ZrO₂/Cr Multilayers for Zirconium Fuel Claddings

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript presents interesting results on protective coating for zirconium alloys. However, a few changes or corrections are needed to improve the quality of the paper: 

- Abstract is concise and well-written

- Introduction is to the point, and the aim of the study is well described. 

-Experimental methods: there are a few typos/grammatical mistakes (for example line 58-60, singular verb and plural verbs)  

-results:

- line 110: what does "thirty alternative multilayers" mean? 

- Please provide the working conditions of the SEM, since the EDX analysis was used to measure ( particularly the thickness of layers), such information will help with understanding the accuracy of measurements ( the area from which X-ray is collected) 

- Also ( line 119): please include the standard deviation for your measurement. How many points were taken to measure the layer thickness? So how can we call the layer uniform? 

- Please rephrase line 184 : it is not clear to me

- pages 9-10: a mechanism for oxidation is proposed. I think providing a schematic drawing of the process will make understanding the mechanism way easier for readers. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, many thanks for your remarks. We improved our manuscript. All changes are highlighted by green in the resubmitted article. All answers in the attached file.

Best wishes,

                               Dmitrii V. Sidelev

                               PhD., Associate Prof.

                               Tomsk Polytechnic University

                               phone: +7-3822-70-17-77 (add. 2518)

                               mob. phone: +7-983-238-71-79

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This experimental work was well targeted for a specific application, nuclear civil sector. Has a good description of methods and results however there are some opportunities of improvements as stated below:

The abstract missed some details of results in brief

Please avoid such kind of block citations “[12-20].” Please check everywhere I this manuscript to have max 3 reference together

The introduction is lack of in depth evaluation of state of art

The authors contribution is limited as noted in introduction description

What is the physics behind the number of selected cycles “The long-term thermal cycling is consisted of 50 cycles.” Or 4 as indicated in methods ?Otherwise it is not very clear how this type of cycling was conducted because in the results is no sign of specific corelation !

The quality of image 1 and 4 is quite poor and difficult to evaluate correctly the coating ! The same Figure 8, 12 which make difficult to validate the results  

There was no any discussion about sacrificial layer which forms at the interface !

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, many thanks for your remarks. We improved our manuscript. All changes are highlighted by green in the re-submitted article. All answers are in the attached file.

Best wishes,

                               Dmitrii V. Sidelev

                               PhD., Associate Prof.

                               Tomsk Polytechnic University

                               phone: +7-3822-70-17-77 (add. 2518)

                               mob. phone: +7-983-238-71-79

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors made the necessary changes, which has improved the quality of the paper significantly. I believe the paper is, now, suitable for publication. 

 

There is a vary small issue: as for the SEM condition, please include the accelerating voltage ( for the JEOL JSM 7500F is usually 15 kV but I don't know the conditions for Vega 3.)  

Reviewer 2 Report

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