A Gold Nanoparticle-Based Molecular Self-Assembled Colorimetric Chemosensor Array for Monitoring Multiple Organic Oxyanions
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
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Reviewer 2 Report
The article is devoted to the actual problem of detecting oxyanions in the environment. The article is written in a good academic language and at the same time understandable. The work carried out is very informative, the experiment and calculations are logically built and well thought out. In general, the work makes a very good impression. However, there are a few minor remarks. Authors should check for typos and text formatting, for example, do not put a dot immediately after the word “Figure”. I would like the novelty of the work carried out to be more clearly indicated. In addition, I would recommend inserting a link to the work [V. Hamedpour, Y. Sasaki, Z. Zhang, R. Kubota, T. Minami. Simple Colorimetric Chemosensor Array for Oxyanions: Quantitative Assay for Herbicide Glyphosate. Analytical Chemistry 2019 91(21), 13627-13632. DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.9b02822] and show the principled difference from it.
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Reviewer 3 Report
This report deals with the synthesis of Au nanoparticles modified with different chain lengths of aminothiols and their use as sensors for the determination of several oxyanions. Authors provided a nice set of statistical analyzes based on chemometrical techniques, linear discrimination analysis, and support vector machine to study the qualitative and quantitative simultaneous detection of oxyanions. I have few concerns regarding the characterization of nanoparticles and due to that I recommend to reconsider the paper after major revisions. My points are raised in the sequence.
- Resolution of Figure 1 is quite poor. Authors should increase the size of Figures and letters.
- Authors should provide in Figure S1 the histogram with the distribution of how many particles were considered to determine the particle size.
- Authors should provide an explanation to the origin of the absorption bands at 530 and 640 nm.
- Authors should provide FTIR data to further investigate the functionalization of Au nanoparticles with the aminothiols.
- Authors should provide a comparison of the sensor performance with the state-of-the-art of other sensors used for the detection of the oxyanions investigated in this study.
- Introduction, line 6: This sentence seems to be lost in the paragraph.
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Reviewer 4 Report
Dear Authors,
The manuscript presented for review addresses the significant issue of constructing colourimetric sensors using available and relatively inexpensive compounds. The data presented in the publication and the supporting data are complementary and do not raise considerable concerns. Analyzing the data meticulously, one can admit that the Authors have successfully obtained nanoparticles oriented to a quantitative and qualitative determination of selected oxyanions. Hence, the factual side is acceptable in its present form.
The visual representation of the data in graphs is also of appropriate quality. And only in Figure 2(d) it was difficult to read the scale.
The biggest problem of the paper is the English language. The manuscript is written in a readable manner. However, in many places, there are severe problems with the tense used, singular and plural, and to a lesser extent with the use or not of proper prepositions. Because the Authors have not included verse numbering in the paper, I can not accurately include grammatical comments. Usually, I try not to keep anyone in the dark, and just give a specific place where there is a particular problem. Here, it is technically problematic. Hence, I suggest resolving language issues in consultation with a technical language interpreter.
Yours faithfully,
Reviewer
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Reviewer 5 Report
Moderate revisions are suggested before considered for a publication
1. The title confused me, and it immediately gave me the impression that the authors are studying inorganic oxyanions such as phosphate, arsenic, nitrate, etc. The word “oxy anions” is not very common for organic compounds. I think the authors may need to revise the title and replace this word in the text with organic oxyanions or pesticide residues. Also, changes in keywords are suggested.
2. How were the average particle sizes of AET-AuNPs determined? Unfortunately, I cannot see a histogram or any data to go along with this.
3. Figure 3 caption is very confusing to the reader – I could not find figure S1a…or other supplementary figures that the author refers to.
4. Authors must highlight their findings in the abstract and conclusion, including detection limits and key analytical data such as linear dynamic range.
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I think that the authors have taken into account all the observations that were addressed to them. As a result the manuscript was revised according to the previous investigations reported in the literature, the limitations of these previous investigations and how the overcome these limitations in the present study. The important thing is that the present work shows the best limit of detection (LOD) for Glyphosate in contrast with other reported works.I would recommend the manuscript to be published in the Journal "Processes".
However there are are still some minor mistakes in the manuscript. I would recommend the authors to check these mistakes before the final version of the manuscript. Here are some examples:
1) Lines: 33, 34, 62, 64,80, 134, 166-167, 263
2) lines 139-142: better place them after the paragraph 3.1
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Reviewer 3 Report
The authors carried out all changes suggested by this reviewer and due to this reason I suggest that this paper be published in Processes.
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