Water-Resistant Latex Coatings: Tuning of Properties by Polymerizable Surfactant, Covalent Crosslinking and Nanostructured ZnO Additive

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presented a method of water-resistant latex coatings. The subject of the paper is original and overall coherent with the aim of the journal. The work is overall complete and well presented, thus the manuscript is recommended to published on Coatings.  

Since the author claims the water-resistance of the coating, a contact-angle measurement method would be recommended to characterize its performance of water diffusion. Please refer to and cite the paper:

Tian Y, Du E, Abdelmola F, et al. Rapid Characterization of Water Diffusion in Polymer Specimens Using a Droplet-Based Method[J]. Langmuir, 2020, 36(26): 7309-7314.

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

 

Thank you very much for a very favorable review. We have added the reference that you suggested in the relevant text (numbered as 56).

In addition, we have checked typographical and grammatical errors using the assistance of a native speaker.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors present water-resistant latex coatings: Tuning of properties by polymerizable surfactant, covalent crosslinking and nanostructured ZnO additive. The research idea is well conceived and the research is thoroughly conducted. The conclusions are supported by the results with high presentation value. I believe the manuscript is acceptable in Coatings after the minor revision of the following comments. 

1- In the materials and methods section, provide the CAS numbers of all the chemicals and substrates used in the study.

2- Provide the bibliographic references of all the underived base equations.

3- It would be better if the authors use a colored approach to differentiate the reported parameters in Figure 3, 6, 7 and 8.

4- Figure 4: The scalebar is the same for SE and BSE or different? The 2 microns scalebar with multiple boundaries is actually very confusing. Provide a better and understandable scalebar within the figure.

5- If possible, provide high-magnification SEM images to better look at the uniformity and the morphology of the coatings.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

 

Thank you very much for a very favorable review and your comments. We have checked and corrected English using the assistance of a native speaker. We also tried to incorporate your comments into our manuscript as best as we could.

 

Point 1: In the materials and methods section, provide CAS numbers of all the chemicals and substrates used in the study.

 

Response 1: We have provided CAS numbers of the used chemicals.

 

Point 2: Provide the bibliographic references of all the underived base equations.

 

Response 2: We added the references (numbered 39 and 40).

 

Point 3: It would be better if the authors use a colored approach to differentiate the reported parameters in Figure 3, 6, 7 and 8.

 

Response 3: We have presented these figures in color, as you suggested.

 

Point 4: The scalebar is the same for SE and BSE or different? The 2 microns scalebar with multiple boundaries is actually very confusing. Provide a better and understandable scalebar within the figure.

 

Response 4: Yes, the scalebar is the same. According to your advice, we provided a better scalebar and also added an additional explanation into the figure caption for clarity.

 

 

Point 5: If possible, provide high-magnification SEM images to better look at the uniformity and the morphology of the coatings.

 

Response 5: We are very sorry, but we cannot fulfill this comment at the moment, as our colleague (SŠ) who is responsible for the SEM measurements is out of work due to covid restrictions. However, we still believe that the presented SEM images are informative even in the poor quality.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx