Disposable Pencil Lead as an Electrochemical Transducer for Monitoring Catechol in River and Tap Water
and Young Soon Kim 2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript introduces a cheap and disposable pencil graphite electrode for detecting Catechol in water. The results are novel and interesting and should be published after the following comments are addressed.
1) The English should be improved. For example, in the abstract, When the electrode was further activated(Am-PGE-2), by apply ing negative potential scan. This sentence is not complete.
2) Fig.3a. there is much space in the right.
3) Fig.5, the a is smaller in size than b and c .
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript ‘Disposable Pencil Lead as an Electrochemical Transducer for Monitoring Catechol in River and Tap Water’ for publication in the journal of coatings.
We appreciate the time and effort that you and your reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments on and valuable improvements to our paper. We have thoroughly checked and made corrections on our manuscript based on the reviewer remarks. After revision, the total number of words in the manuscript are more than 4000. Furthermore, we sincerely revised the manuscript regarding English grammar and style. We will be glad to receive any recommendation to improve the English in specific parts or lines of our manuscript. Please see below for a point-by-point response to your valuable comments.
- Comment 1: The English should be improved. For example, in the abstract, when the electrode was further activated (AmPGE-2), by applying negative potential scan. This sentence is not complete.
Author’s response: We agree with the reviewer assessment. Accordingly, the line ‘when the electrode was further activated (AmPGE-2), by applying negative potential scan’ is revised and the following sentence is included.
‘A further improvement in the performance was observed when the aminated electrode (Am-PGE-1) was activated by applying a negative potential scan (Am-PGE-2)`.
In addition, the issues concerning the English language and style of the whole manuscript like grammatical mistakes and misspells are carefully addressed to the manuscript submitted after review.
- Comment 2:3a. there is much space in the right.
Author’s response: Thank you for pointing out this. Fig.3a. has been updated.
- Comment 3:5, the a is smaller in size than b and c.
Author’s response: As suggested by the reviewer, this issue has been resolved.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors showed a cheap and disposable pencil graphite electrode by the incorporation of amine groups. This manuscript is well written, but should be improved in several parts:
1. The novelty of this manuscript is not clear enough. The authors should further highlight the novelty.
2. The quality of some figures is not high. The authors should further improve the quality of figures for this manuscript.
3. How to further improve the performance by using the proposed strategy? The authors are suggested to give some comments.
4. The format of references should be carefully checked. There are some mistakes.
5. To make this manuscript more interesting and general, some papers should be cited (e.g., Sensors 2023, 23, 435).
Author Response
- Comment 1: The novelty of this manuscript is not clear enough. The authors should further highlight the novelty.
Author’s response: Thank you. As suggested, the novelty of this study has been highlighted in the corrected manuscript as instructed.
- Comment 2: The quality of some figures is not high. The authors should further improve the quality of figures for this manuscript.
Author’s response: We have improved the quality of figures and have been replaced to the corrected manuscript.
- Comment 3: How to further improve the performance by using the proposed strategy? The authors are suggested to give some comments.
Author’s response: Thank you for the interesting question. The proposed strategy may be improved with the incorporation of polymers and/or nanomaterials for modification of PGE. But that may increase the complexity and cost required for the fabrication of the electrochemical sensor. Therefore, we need to studied more.
- Comment 4: The format of references should be carefully checked. There are some mistakes.
Author’s response: The format of references has been carefully examined in the corrected manuscript.
- Comment 5: To make this manuscript more interesting and general, some papers should be cited (e.g., Sensors 2023, 23, 435).
Author’s response: Some papers have been cited in accordance with the Reviewer’s suggestion. Please see in the reference section. For example, 35-37,41,58
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments to the authors:
C1.Some results have been missed to inform in the abstract.
C2. The aim of the study should be revised.
C3. Why did the authors apply SWV instead of DPV technique?
C4. HPLC method should be applied for comparison.
Author Response
- Comment 1: Some results have been missed to inform in the abstract.
Author’s response: This is an excellent assessment. Significant results of the study have been inserted in the abstract of the corrected manuscript.
- Comment 2: The aim of the study should be revised.
Author’s response: Thank you. The aim of the study has been revised and updated in the corrected manuscript.
- Comment 3: Why did the authors apply SWV instead of DPV technique?
Author’s response: The electro-analytical detection of catechol was done by using SWV rather than DPV. Because in case of the SWV, a short analysis time is required as higher scan rates (1 Vs-1) can be employed which is not possible in the case of DPV. As a result, consumption of electroactive compounds are reduced and, in turn, the blocking of the electrode gets attenuated. Moreover, if the time for convective mass transport is large compared to the pulse width, then the SWV net current is insensitive to currents arising from convective mass transport. Lastly, the net current used in SWV helps to reject background currents very efficiently which may function as a critical factor in determining LOD.[1,2]
- Comment 4: HPLC method should be applied for comparison.
Author’s response: We agree with the reviewer assessment. This is definitely a good strategy to build up real-time applicability of the proposed sensor. But due to lack of resources, we have been unable to undertake the experiment.
References:
[1] J. Osteryoung, R.A. Osteryoung, Sqaure Wave Voltammetry, Anal. Chem. 57 (1985).
[2] B. Uslu, The Analytical Applications of Square Wave Voltammetry on Pharmaceutical Analysis, Open Chem. Biomed. Methods J. 3 (2011) 56–73. https://doi.org/10.2174/1875038901003010056.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors did not well answer the questions and the issues are still unsolved.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The most concerns have been addressed carefully.
