Investigation of the Microstructure, Hardness and Corrosion Resistance of a New 58Ag24Pd11Cu2Au2Zn1.5In1.5Sn Dental Alloy

Crt.No.

Reviewer’s comment

Response

1.

Moderate English changes required 

The English of the entire manuscript was revised by a qualified person as is proven in the attached file.

2.

There should be some direct results to prove the idea of Fig. 8

The microstructure features shown in Fig. 7  are correlated with element distributions in Fig. 8. Thus, the lacking of Ag and increasing occurrence of Zn in the lower left corner  of Fig. 8 can be assigned to the occurrence of a compound in the same area in Fig. 7.a

Crt.No.

Reviewer’s comment

Response

1.

English level: the whole manuscript should be checked and the right terms should be used.

The English of the entire manuscript was revised by a qualified person as is proven in the attached file.

2.

Title: the title does not correspond to the manuscript content. It is better to use “investigation of the microstructure, hardness and corrosion resistance” instead of “complex characterization”.

The title was changed i.e. “Investigation of the microstructure, hardness and corrosion resistance of a New 58Ag24Pd11Cu2Au2Zn1.5In1.5Sn Dental Alloy”

3

Abstract: it is informative enough Some wrong terms, marked in yellow, are used (“higher-noble” is the right term).

Higher-carat and lower-carat terms were replaced by higher-noble and lower-noble, respectively

4

The last sentence shows not novelty.  The complete characterization of a metal alloy includes all these methods.

So, the sentence: “The microstructural features, the inclusionary state and the phase natures into 28 58Ag24Pd11Cu2Au2Zn1.5In1.5Sn revealed by consecrated methods are the other novelties

presented in the paper” should be omitted.

The sentence was omitted

5

 Introduction: row 75: the statement “…. the way in which it was quantified the microstructure parameters of this alloy based on  computer image analysis is a novelty in the field.” does not show any novelty. This procedure is often used for evaluation of the microstructure

The sentence was omitted

6

Materials and methods: row 105: the whole sentence, marked in yellow, is unnecessary. The specialists in the area know the application of optical microscopy.

The sentence was omitted

7

 Results and Discussion: row 160: there is some misunderstanding with the figures’ numbering: The The inclusionary state of the area in 1.a is shown in Figure 5.”, But in the caption of Fig. 5 is written: “Figure 5. Inclusionary state associated to Fig. 2a: a) original microstructure image…..”. Please check and correct.

The numbering was corrected

8

Row 264: there are grammatical errors in the sentence: “The studied alloy consists mainly of an eutectic (brown areas in Figs. 1-3) that engulfed Ag-Cu, 264 Cu-Zn, Ag-Cu, Ag-In, In-Sn binary compounds and, the most probably, ternary ones of the form Pd-265 Cu-Zn (Fig. 8) that nucleate and growth before eutectic solidification of the matrix”. 

The sentence was corrected. Rows 273-276

9

Conclusions: they do not correspond to the manuscript content and should be basically revised.  The main finding should be put in the conclusions.

The conclusions were revised (see the attached revised manusctipt)

10

Row 276: only hardness is investigated in this paper and not all mechanical properties. Rows 283-285: the whole sentence, marked in yellow, is not suitable for conclusion.

Rows 283-285 were omitted

11

            Rows 290-293: Using all mentioned methods this is not novelty, but standard characterization procedure, So, it should be omitted. 

Rows 290-293 were omitted