Infrared Spectroscopy Studies of Aluminum Oxide and Metallic Aluminum Powders, Part II: Adsorption Reactions of Organofunctional Silanes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article treats the aluminum nanopowders as precursor for the applications in material science and technology. The manuscript has been written ivery well. I am sure that the article will be interesting for the readers of the Journal and can be published in its current form.

Author Response

Thank you for your kind review, and I will not take any further action for reviewer

Reviewer 2 Report

The present work by Ludwig investigates the adsorption of organofunctional silanes on aluminum oxide and metallic aluminum by infrared spectroscopy in situ. In my opinion, the presented results are interesting and the manuscript can be accepted after minor revision.

I would recommend to add the values of wavenumbers to Figures demonstrate in IR spectra. Current presentation is not so clear, for the readers’ convenient it will be better to see the values.

Section 4 is unclear. Probably it is a part of template.

Author Response

Thank you for your review of my manuscript. Wavenumber values were added to the figures and fixes were made to the template to address the issue.

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript performed the infrared spectroscopy studies of Aluminum Oxide and Metallic Aluminum Powders on the  adsorption reactions of organofunctional silanes. A diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) was used and the results are interested. A main question is the section of Discussion is meaningful. please revise the content. 

Author Response

Thank you for your careful review of my work. The additional discussion section was removed from the text as it was a mistake in the latex file.

Reviewer 4 Report

The article is interesting, also as a second part for study.

The author tries to demonstrate the ability to follow surface reactions with powders in situ using a gas-phase doser connected to a DRIFTS reaction chamber. Study is focused on boehmite, as-received aluminum powder (N-Al), and an artificially grown boehmite surface on metallic aluminum particles (B-Al). alysts. 
The materials and techniques involved are well described.  

Some revisions are required:

• the background literature could bee enriched with new references;
• Figure 1 is presenting a setup, is that original of authors or general ?
• 4. Discussion - is from template please delete title and following paragraph. 
• On absorbtion other compounds were not identified or highlighted?

Author Response

Thank you for your review of my manuscript, please see below the additions to the manuscript for your review:

• the background literature could bee enriched with new references;
  • The references in the paper were dated mostly because the models have been established for some years. A brief review of the recent literature revealed some newer references that were included in the background section. 
• Figure 1 is presenting a setup, is that original of authors or general ?
  • The schematic was a general image made in a drawing software package (Visio). It resulted from the work of the author and was not taken from another reference.  
• 4. Discussion - is from template please delete title and following paragraph. 
  • I apologize for the mistake and believe I have addressed this in the new submission.
• On absorbtion other compounds were not identified or highlighted?
  • I felt the general balance between the IR spectra for the powders and the silane probe molecules should be sole focus of this manuscript as to not overcomplicate the results for the reader.  Other works were completed and briefly mentioned in the conclusions section.