A Scalable High-Throughput Deposition and Screening Setup Relevant to Industrial Electrocatalysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article demonstrated “A scalable high-throughput deposition and screening setup relevant to industrial electrocatalysis”. The authors conducted several characterizations. However, there as several issues as following which need to be solved before publication.

• The authors should eliminate the current grammatical and punctuation mark errors and also confirm the correct scientific English.
• The authors should write the complete terms of all abbreviations (including the instruments) before the first use in the abstract and main manuscript. 
• The authors should clearly explain the innovation and importance of their work on the introduction of the manuscript. They should justify the value of the work and compare their work with previously similar published papers.
• The quality of the images should be improved.
• The authors should work on the scientific English of the manuscript and elaborate it.
• The authors should cite important references. The below reference should be cited on the revised manuscript: ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 12, 27821–27852 (2020); Chem. Rev. 2016, 116, 6, 3594–3657.; Chem. Soc. Rev., 2020,49, 2196-2214.; and J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019,7, 14971-15005.
• The quality of all figures and plots should be improved. The related numbers are not clear well.
• The brand and model of all instruments used in this study should be included in the revised manuscript. 
• Graphical abstract should be presented.

Author Response

The authors thank the reviewer for his/her time and valuable response on the manuscript. We have carefully read through the suggestions and remarks, and have made adjustments to the text to satisfy the requested changes to the best of our abilities.

>> The authors should eliminate the current grammatical and punctuation mark errors and also confirm the correct scientific English.
The authors have corrected all remaining errors.

>> The authors should write the complete terms of all abbreviations (including the instruments) before the first use in the abstract and main manuscript.
Thank you for this suggestions. We have added complete terms of all abbreviations, including polymers and analysis methods.

>> The authors should clearly explain the innovation and importance of their work on the introduction of the manuscript. They should justify the value of the work and compare their work with previously similar published papers.
Justification of the relevance and importance can be found in lines 51-60. We compare our current setup with all published systems that can be found in the reviews referenced before, and feel that this comparison is adequate. In case we have missed any relevant published papers that undermine our statements, we would gladly receive more detailed information on this particular topic so that we can improve the intruction part of the manuscript.

>> The quality of the images should be improved.
High quality versions of all images were uploaded separately in the online submission system.

>> The authors should work on the scientific English of the manuscript and elaborate it.
The research presented in the manuscript relies heavily on engineering disciplines and has henceforth a less academic tone. We feel that the language adequately supports the research.

>> The authors should cite important references. The below reference should be cited on the revised manuscript: ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 12, 27821–27852 (2020); Chem. Rev. 2016, 116, 6, 3594–3657.; Chem. Soc. Rev., 2020,49, 2196-2214.; and J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019,7, 14971-15005.
We thank the reviewer for these valuable suggestions. The topics of the referenced papers are: covalent organic frameworks, oxygen reduction reaction, and two papers on the design of electrocatalysts. We have carefully read the referenced papers and unfortunately do not feel that any of them are relevant to the topic of our manuscript.

>> The quality of all figures and plots should be improved. The related numbers are not clear well.
High quality versions of all images were uploaded separately in the online submission system.

>> The brand and model of all instruments used in this study should be included in the revised manuscript.
We have carefully checked the brands and models of the instruments used in the study and we feel that an exhaustive overview was already given in the first version of the manuscript.

>> Graphical abstract should be presented.
A graphical abstract has been prepared and will be sent to the editorial office.

We want to thank the reviewer again and hope that he/she approves the manuscript in its current form.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors present a high-throughput setup consisting of 64 parallel plate electrochemical flow cells, using industrial current densities conditions, showing promising scalability capacity. The paper in general is interesting, using good English language. The introduction is complete and provides sufficient literature references to understand the paper. The presented graphs and images are clear and interesting. The discussion is extensive, detailing, and justifying each process/experiment performed in the paper. The conclusion is able to summarize the paper and provides future perspectives. 

However, the high throughput setup could be a bit confusing and thus, complex to reproduce. The authors are recommended to add more images showing the multiple parts of the setup or to reference Figure 3 in the methods section. 

 

Author Response

The authors thank the reviewer for his/her time and valuable response on the manuscript. We have carefully read through the suggestions and remarks, and have made adjustments to the text to satisfy the requested changes to the best of our abilities.

In the experimental section, we have added two graphics that will improve the understanding of the setup. The first one is an "exploded" 3D rendering of the HT stack with labels on all the important functional parts. The second graphic is a rendering of the electrode PCBs, which should provide a clearer understanding of the routing of the electrical signals, as well as how the flow channels are situated with respect to the electrodes.

We want to thank the reviewer again and hope that he/she approves the manuscript in its current form.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper "A scalable high-throughput deposition and screening 2 setup relevant to industrial electrocatalysis" is interesting and can represent an important approach to connect lab scale experiment with industrial application.

The work is well presented and discussed. Nevertheless, in some part it is quite complicated to follow the content. I suggest to organize it using more bulleted lists to make the text easier to understand. 

I also report a short list of furhter corrections:

2.1.1 “Terminology”. In the list after colon remove the capital letter

Line85 – 129: in the line 85 it is used Nafion 117 in line 129 Nafion 115. Correct or explain better

Line 131: after “electrode overpotentials” anode is not a subscript, please correct it.

Line 178-180:PWM, an extended version of this acronyms is missing

Author Response

The authors thank the reviewer for his/her time and valuable response on the manuscript. We have carefully read through the suggestions and remarks, and have made adjustments to the text to satisfy the requested changes to the best of our abilities.

We have added bulleted lists to the experimental section to a large extent, and agree that this makes for a clearer overview. We have tried changing parts of the main text into more point-by-point format, but unfortunately feel that the flow of the text becomes too interrupted. We hope that the changes as presented make the content as a whole easier to understand.

Regarding the further corrections:
>> 2.1.1 “Terminology”. In the list after colon remove the capital letter
Corrected.

>> Line85 – 129: in the line 85 it is used Nafion 117 in line 129 Nafion 115. Correct or explain better
Thank you for spotting this error. We used Nafion 115 (127 um thickness) throughout the experiments, and corrected it in the revised manuscript.

>> Line 131: after “electrode overpotentials” anode is not a subscript, please correct it.
Corrected.

>> Line 178-180:PWM, an extended version of this acronyms is missing
Pulse-width modulated (PWM). Corrected.

We want to thank the reviewer again and hope that he/she approves the manuscript in its current form.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is revised properly. It can be accepted for publication.