Effect of Glow-Discharge Plasma Treatment on Contact Angle and Micromorphology of Bamboo Green Surface

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled ‘Effect of glow-discharge plasma treatment on contact angle and micro-morphology of bamboo green surface’ is well written and broadens the understanding about the effect of plasma treatment on bamboo surface properties, which generally plays the crucial role in bonding process and are known to secure proper bonding quality.

However, I would like to lead the authors attention to some suggestions and corrections in order to improve the manuscript. 

• Page 2 lines 70-77, the authors describe the material preparation. However, it is unclear how many parallel specimens (blocks) were prepared from each stem in order to secure the reliability of the obtained results. Could the authors describe it in more detail? Could the authors also describe in more detail the material origin, treatment, handling and storing process before the specimen preparation?
• Page 5 line 181 and in Table 1, the authors state that the curvature of the surfaces of stem 1, 2 and 3 had effect on height profile and values presented in Table 1. Could this curvature, be mathematically corrected since it is distorting the results presented in Table 1? This is normal procedure when the roughness of surface is measured.
• Figure 5 presents the SEM images of bamboo surfaces. The magnification of the images is changing and the images are showing the scale from 1 to 30 micrometers. It is well known that the surface of natural materials have variability. How did the authors secure that these images are the most representative?
• Page 8 line 246, the authors claim that the surface roughness increase, brought by plasma treatment, affecting on improvement of wettability shown in this study. However, the effect of the plasma treatment shows to be temporary, and the results show that already 72h after plasma treatment the wettability of the surface will decrease dramatically. Do the authors state that the surface roughness will change in 72h? Or are there any other factors affecting on surface wettability, which are not discussed by the authors?

 

Author Response

According to the two issues which Estelle Zhang found and Prof. Phil's request, I made some modification, i. e., the author list, figure number, author and acknowledgment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article has been carefully prepared and has high scientific value. Nevertheless, I have minor comments:

1. Figure 1 b. It is worth to enlarge the element of the cube shown in the picture b. It can be easily presented as an enlarged projection of a piece of the main element. That will make easier to read its actual dimensions.
2. The authors of the article examined the contact angle as part of the research, to which I have no objections.However, it would be useful to include the value of surface energy in this article.Surface energy characterizes surface properties better than water wettability alone.

Author Response

Please see it in the attachment.

Reviewer 3 Report

Review of the article: “Effect of glow-discharge plasma treatment on contact angle and micro-morphology of bamboo green surface”

               The topic of this research and output might be useful for the Forests readers. In order to improve the manuscript the following suggestions should be considered.

Title:

Please use "micromorphology" rather than "micro-morphology". Make changes to this in the article.

Abstract

Line 13: Should be "bamboo panels manufacturing" rather than "bamboo panles manufacturing".

Keywords:

Line 25: Please divide terms for "bamboo" and "surface". Please add terms other than those included in the title e.g. bonding.

Introduction

• I think it is valuable to add information about e.g. the bamboo resource base, area in the world. This makes introduction more interesting and the readers can estimate the importance of bamboo.

Line 32: What does "fast timbering" mean? Rather, it should be "fast growth". Bamboo is not a timber.

Line 49: Please provide the definition of the term "utilization ratio" in brackets.

Materials and Methods

Materials

Line 70: Start sentence with "The" i.e. The 3 bamboo stems...

Line 72:

• Are you able to determine from what height of the bamboo the stem samples for testing were obtained?
• Please enter the age of the bamboo.

Line 73: Add a space in "by 5mm" i.e. "by 5 mm".

Line 77: After "Bamboo specimens preparation" should be letter (c)?

Methods

Line 80: Provide more information about the reactor i.e. technical data, manufacturer.

 

• How many samples were used for plasma treatment, contact angle test, 3-D topography and roughness.
• How many measurements were taken in each kind of test?

 

Line 86: What was the volume of the water drop?

Results

Line 153: Should be "contact angle" rather than "contanct angle".

Line 161: poplar or polar?

Table 1: Please add a statistical analysis of test results. We cannot write about differences if we do not know if they are statistically significant e.g. based on t-test or Dunnett test.

Figure 5: Why stem 1 before treatment is not showed in magnification to 1μm like stem 2 or 3?

Author Response

Please see it in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx