Fabrication and Magneto-Optical Properties of Yb₂O₃ Based Ceramics

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, transparent ceramics based on ytterbium oxide has been successfully produced by vacuum sintering of SHS powders with the use of lanthanum oxide sintering aid. The contents in the submitted manuscript were well organized. Therefore, I recommend its publication after minor revisions.

• In the Fig.2, (a) and (b) symbols are missing.
• Please rearrange the SEM images in Fig. 4.
• Please unify the tick-mark labels in the figures. In some figures the tick label is out and in other figures it is in.
• Please unify the units, for example for the wavelength, do not sometime use nm, sometime use μm.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript described an investigation about the fabrication and magneto-optical properties of Yb2O3 based ceramics. The major achievement in this work is successfully to produce transparent ceramics based on ytterbium oxide by vacuum sintering of SHS powders with the use of lanthanum oxide sintering aid. The authors found that the addition of 5 mol. % of La2O3 does not cause formation of secondary phases in the Yb2O3 powders; and the 4%La:Yb2O3 ceramics showed the best in-line transmittance of 73% at a wavelength of 2 μm among the studied samples. The authors also obtained the wavelength dependent Verdet constant for this material with a goal for using it as Faraday isolators.  The paper is written well but the experimental results are not well presented. The lack of novelty is also make it hard for publication as its current form.

If the authors want to revise the paper for publication, please also consider the following technical issues.

1. The abbreviations (e.g., SHS, SEM, XRD) in abstract should be defined at first mention.
2. The authors state that “the main efforts of researchers in the latter direction are aimed at developing new magneto-optical materials with better characteristics (high thermal conductivity and Verdet's constant, minimal absorption at operating wavelengths, etc.). However, the authors did not show the novelty of this material studied regarding these better characteristics.
3. The Figure 5 caption is misspelled.
4. Figure 6 only show optical transmission spectrum of 4% ceramics. It will be helpful to show all spectra from all samples. The pictures shown in Figure 5 only for visible range.
5. In Figure 7, all curves are clouded together. It is hard to see the data from this works. The Figure cation and label are also not clear. It is also better to show more data from this work. Like 3 and 5 %.
6. The authors suggest that the residual porosity plays the most important role about optical transmission. The 4% La make it best in-line transmittance. I am not very convinced on this issue.    

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors overall an excellent paper which I really enjoyed to read and review.

I found some minor points of formal character that should be adressed during the revision.

Annealing process: in line 114 (experimental section) you mention that the samples were annealed at 1300°c for 2h in air after vacuum sintering , while in line 202 (chapter 3.2) you mention an annealing process of 5h at 900°C

which of the two is correct ?

figure 2 slipped over the edge of the page, as what you see is what you finally get, there is no typesetting by the publisher, you should properly positiojn the graph so that the figure and the subscript are on the same page.

figure 4 should be a bit larger, there is still some space on the page.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I am satisfied with the authors' response.