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Construction of Highly Efficient Zn_0.4Cd_0.6S and Cobalt Antimony Oxide Heterojunction Composites for Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution and Pollutant Degradation

Water 2022, 14(23), 3827; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14233827

by Chen Chen^1,*

, Xiao Zhang^2,3, Ting Cheng², Mingyue Wen¹, Yuan Tian¹ and Baoxuan Hou¹

Reviewer 1: Anonymous

Reviewer 2:

Zhang Liu

Reviewer 3: Anonymous

Water 2022, 14(23), 3827; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14233827

Submission received: 9 October 2022 / Revised: 10 November 2022 / Accepted: 21 November 2022 / Published: 24 November 2022

(This article belongs to the Section Wastewater Treatment and Reuse)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

English is rough in some places.

Introduction starts from afar. I think it would be better to just focus on photocatalysis in the introduction, state-of-the-art and explanation how the new catalysts offers an improvement. There is some of it there, but it is not given the adequate discussion while a lot of space is devoted to a very general description of wastewater treatment.

Line 180: chemical names need to be spelled out on the first mention. Also, at what concentration were these chemicals added?

The advantage of the composite catalyst compared to its two separate components are clearly demonstrated. But how would this material compare to other catalysts? What are the advantages? How does H2 production per unit mass of catalyst compare to other methods?

Some quantification of various radicals is needed.

Kinetics of pollutant degradation are described as first order, but they should be described as pseudo-first order. The concentration of various radials stayed stable in the system which allowed for the kinetics to follow first-order patterns.

The dots on the radicals should be in the upper right superscript.

Author Response

(1) English is rough in some places.

Reply: Thank you very much for your comments to our manuscript. With the help of a friend who is an English native speaker, the expression of English in the full article has been comprehensively optimized.

(2) Introduction starts from afar. I think it would be better to just focus on photocatalysis in the introduction, state-of-the-art and explanation how the new catalysts offers an improvement. There is some of it there, but it is not given the adequate discussion while a lot of space is devoted to a very general description of wastewater treatment.

Reply: Thank you for your comments. According to the comments of reviewer, techniques unrelated to photocatalysis in the introduction have been removed, and the expression of introduction has been comprehensively optimized.

(3) Line 180: chemical names need to be spelled out on the first mention. Also, at what concentration were these chemicals added?

Reply：Thank you for your comments. The chemical names have been added on the first mention, and the concentration of these chemicals has been added in the article.

(4) The advantage of the composite catalyst compared to its two separate components are clearly demonstrated. But how would this material compare to other catalysts? What are the advantages? How does H2 production per unit mass of catalyst compare to other methods?

Reply: Thank you very much for your comments, and we have added relevant content in the introduction part. The added Tables 2 and 3 compared the catalyst performance (degradation of MB and hydrogen evolution) with other recent catalytic materials, and the corresponding discussion was also added.

(5) Some quantification of various radicals is needed.

Reply：Thank you for your comments. The comments of reviewer are helpful to further investigate the catalytic mechanism. However, it is regrettable that, at present, our research group does not have the ability to quantitatively analyze various free radicals. In the future research, we will carry out related research through the update of instruments and equipment.

(6) Kinetics of pollutant degradation are described as first order, but they should be described as pseudo-first order. The concentration of various radials stayed stable in the system which allowed for the kinetics to follow first-order patterns.

Reply：Thank you very much for your comments. The expression of kinetics for pollutant degradation has been modified in the article.

(7) The dots on the radicals should be in the upper right superscript.

Reply：Thank you very much for your comments. When reviewing the related literatures, we found that the dots on the hydroxyl radicals and the superoxide radicals can also be written in the left middle of the oxygen atom. So we consider whether such an expression is also accessible.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Editor,

Thanks for inviting me for reviewing the manuscript entitled Construction of highly efficient Zn_0.4Cd_0.6S and cobalt antimony oxide heterojunction composites for visible-light-driven photocatalytic hydrogen evolution and pollutant degradation authored by Chen Chen et al.

The author studied the coupling of p-n semiconductors as high efficient photocatalysts for environmental remediation and hydrogen production applications. Various characterization techniques were used to analyse the structure, morphologies, compositions, optical properties, and energy band structures to reveal the enhanced photocatalytic activities for photocatalytic pollutant removal and hydrogen production. The work is systematically done, while some issues are still needed to be addressed before acceptance.

1) First of all, the language should be checked through the manuscript, there are lots of grammar errors and unclear expression. I am looking forward to reading an updated version of manuscript.

2) The abstract is not written well and should be re-organized. For example, normally the abstract is given in a sequence of brief background, method, results, discussion including mechanisms behind, and significance. The abstract does not differ them clearly, their causation or correlation should be enhanced.

3) Please revise the first sentence of introduction, the expression is wrong.

In the introduction part, the hazardous of organic pollutant is emphasized while the background on photocatalytic hydrogen evolution is not given, some up-to-date achievement could be referenced.

The hydrogen production performance is excellent in this study and could be compared with other report (a summary on this is provided in reference [3], for example).

[1] Chen C X, Xiong Y Y, Zhong X, et al. Enhancing Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production via the Construction of Robust Multivariate Ti‐MOF/COF Composites[J]. Angewandte Chemie, 2022, 134(3): e202114071.

[2] Guo Y, Liang Z, Xue Y, et al. A cation exchange strategy to construct Rod-shell CdS/Cu2S nanostructures for broad spectrum photocatalytic hydrogen production[J]. Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, 2022, 608: 158-163.

[3] Liu Z, Yu Y, Zhu X, et al. Semiconductor heterojunctions for photocatalytic hydrogen production and Cr (VI) Reduction: A review [J]. Materials Research Bulletin, 2022, 147: 111636.

4) Grammar errors, please rewrite Line 67-71, page 2.

5) Co(NO3)2 is not available, please check whether it is cobalt nitrate hydrate salt, instead of Co(NO3)2.

6) Line 135-136, “The composite materials were recorded as ZCS@xCSO, and the x was the dosage of added CSO sample.”, please correct to “…… and the x (unit in g) was ….”

7) Line 195, page 5. “…..were located at 2θ:…..” should be corrected to “…..were located at 2θ (crystal facet):…..” so that it will be consistent with the following content.

8) Line 205, page 5. “ UV-vis” should be “UV-vis DRS”.

9) Line 223, page 5. “which was similar with reference” please indicate and cite the reference.

10) Please delete the “dot” after a. and b. in all Figures if any. Also, the author used “Figure” in figure captions, while in the text, it stated “Fig.” instead of Figure, please check the format according to journal guideline.

11) please move rightward the scale bars in all TEM and SEM figures, so that these figures will look better.

12) In the reaction equations, please delete “-“ between “degradation” and “products”.

13) The reference format is totally wrong, please revise.

Author Response

(1) First of all, the language should be checked through the manuscript, there are lots of grammar errors and unclear expression. I am looking forward to reading an updated version of manuscript.

Reply: Thank you very much for your comments to our manuscript. With the help of a friend who is an English native speaker, the expression of English in the whole article has been comprehensively optimized.

(2) The abstract is not written well and should be re-organized. For example, normally the abstract is given in a sequence of brief background, method, results, discussion including mechanisms behind, and significance. The abstract does not differ them clearly, their causation or correlation should be enhanced.

Reply：Thank you very much for your comments. According to the requirements of reviewer, the abstract has been optimized.

(3) Please revise the first sentence of introduction, the expression is wrong.

Reply: Thank you very much for your comments, the expression in the introduction has been modified.

(4) In the introduction part, the hazardous of organic pollutant is emphasized while the background on photocatalytic hydrogen evolution is not given, some up-to-date achievement could be referenced.

Reply：Thank you very much for your comments. In the introduction section, we have added a background introduction to the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution.

(5) The hydrogen production performance is excellent in this study and could be compared with other report (a summary on this is provided in reference [3]

for example).

[3] Liu Z, Yu Y, Zhu X, et al. Semiconductor heterojunctions for photocatalytic hydrogen production and Cr (VI) Reduction: A review [J]. Materials Research Bulletin, 2022, 147: 111636.

Reply：Thank you very much for your comments, and we have added relevant content in the introduction part. The added Tables 2 and 3 compared the catalyst performance (degradation of MB and the hydrogen evolution) with other recent catalytic materials, and the corresponding discussion was also added. Also, the above references from 1 to 3 has been cited.

(6) Grammar errors, please rewrite Line 67-71, page 2.

Reply：Thank you very much for your comments. The grammar errors have been modified in the related part.

(7) Co(NO3)2 is not available, please check whether it is cobalt nitrate hydrate salt, instead of Co(NO3)2.

Reply：Thank you very much for your comments. The related expression has been modified in the article.

(8) Line 135-136, “The composite materials were recorded as ZCS@xCSO, and the x was the dosage of added CSO sample.”, please correct to “…… and the x (unit in g) was ….”

Reply: Thank you very much for your comments. The related expression has been modified in the related part of article.

(9) Line 195, page 5. “…..were located at 2θ:…..” should be corrected to “…..were located at 2θ (crystal facet):…..” so that it will be consistent with the following content.