Superhydrophobic Candle Soot Coating Directly Deposited on Aluminum Substrate with Enhanced Robustness

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript discussed one candle soot deposition experiment on an aluminum substrate and studied the surface property. I will recommend publication after the questions below are addressed.

(1) I considered the abstract and conclusion could add some potential applications for this experiment. Abstract did not need to be compiled with experiments details.

(2) For sample preparation, why do you choose Al alloy as the substrate, and have you tested with other substrates? Does that also fit with your findings?

(3) For the CS deposition time, what is the distance between you candle to your substrate? The distance will make difference. If you make deposition longer than 40s, what will happen?

(4) For SEM (Line 137), how do you define" porosity of coating slightly decreased", "increase of the size of nanoparticles". It is not that easy to observe from the SEM. Can you explain more?

(5) The author has made AFM in supplementary work. Which specific sample did the author use for the AFM? Is the thickness close to the thickness in SEM?

 

Author Response

Please Kindly see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I have provided my comments in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Since there is no discussion on obtained results and also the novelty is not clear, this manuscript is not proper for the publication. Other comments could be found as follows,

• What is the difference between this manuscript and the following articles?

*Double layered superhydrophobic PDMS-Candle soot coating with durable corrosion resistance and thermal-mechanical robustness

*Superhydrophobic photothermal icephobic surfaces based on candle soot

*Fabrication of Water Jet Resistant and Thermally Stable Superhydrophobic Surfaces by Spray Coating of Candle Soot Dispersion

*Design of mechanical robust superhydrophobic Cu coatings with excellent corrosion resistance and self-cleaning performance inspired by lotus leaf

*Recent Advances in the Fabrication of Superhydrophobic Surfaces

*Highly Durable Superhydrophobic Polydimethylsiloxane/Silica Nanocomposite Surfaces with Good Self-Cleaning Ability

*Candle Soot as a Template for a Transparent Robust Superamphiphobic Coating

• In the article title, what properties were investigated? It is not clear that what the application is.
• In keywords, it seems that the word “Sandpaper” is not proper.
• In the introduction, the first paragraph included 17 references! More details of references should be mentioned. The literature review is not proper in this form.
• The novelty should be highlighted compared to the literature review.
• “Milles S et al” should be changed to “Milles et al.”. Such these errors should be corrected in the whole text.
• What was the basis for selecting values for the time periods of the carbon soot deposition and the number of the sandpaper sizes?
• In keywords, “Micro-nano roughness” could be seen! However, nano roughness could not be observed in Figure 1.
• Figure 2 should be eliminated.
• In Figure 3, what is “D”? Is it the thickness? If yes, how was it controlled? By the time? If yes, different deposited thicknesses should be reported for all process parameters.
• In Figure 3, some images have no scale bars.
• What is “SA” in Figure 4? Such a problem should be addressed for Figures 6, 7, and 8.
• The scale bar should be added to images in Figures 7 and 8.
• There is no discussion on obtained results. They should be compared to other results of other researches.
• The conclusion part should be rewritten one by one, in order to show the novelty.
• The quantitative analysis should be done to find the sensitivity analysis of two input parameters. What is the effect? Were they effective or not? This job could be done by the regression analysis in the software.
• What was the repeatability of testing? Was there any standard for testing?

Author Response

Please kindly see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The Authors have improved the manuscript to a satisfactory standard.  So present form of manuscript can be accepted. 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments.

Reviewer 3 Report

- Mentioning that for future studies, it will be done is not proper. Moreover, at least, this sentence should be added to the text before the conclusion part.

- The measured thicknesses should be reported for all process parameters studied by the authors. 

- Using different scale bars in Figure 2 is not proper. They could not be compared in this form. 

- Still, no discussion could be found for some figures, such as Figure 2. 

- The conclusion part is not written one by one, with a bullet, to show the novelty! It is not done. 

- Figure S3 needs the standard deviation for the results of each coating time.

- Answers to the following comment should be added to the text with mentioning references.

• What was the basis for selecting values for the time periods of the carbon soot deposition and the number of the sandpaper sizes?
• In Figure 3, what is “D”? Is it the thickness? If yes, how was it controlled? By the time? If yes, different deposited thicknesses should be reported for all process parameters.

Author Response

Please kindly see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx