Effect of Air Annealing on the Structural, Textural, Magnetic, Thermal and Luminescence Properties of Cerium Fluoride Nanoparticles
, Sergey Sokovnin 1,2, Tat’yana Sultanova 2, Olga Svetlova 2, Mikhail A. Uimin 2,3, Maria Ulitko 2 and Mikhail Zuev 4
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Ilves discussed the studies about physiochemical characteristics of CeF3 nanopowder produced by electron evaporation. The preparation methods, characterization methods and analysis strategies, interesting physiochemical properties, as well as possible applications to biomedicines because of low cytotoxicity. The data was sufficient in this manuscript for the journal Physchem. But a few questions should be addressed before official publication. First, I suggest that authors should provide a new title which could cover all cases discussed in the paper. A new title might give readers a clearer idea about what they have done. Second, I wonder why authors would like to use their materials for biomedicines. Authors should provide more reasonable explanation about this point. Some better background knowledge might work. Third, descriptions in this manuscript should be double checked. I have labeled some issues in yellow color for authors' reference in the attached document. For example, the citation of references in this paper should be reorganized in a more "proper" way. Units such as temperature should delete blank space between "o" and "C". Blanks between words should also be deleted. Some other words which were not English should be deleted or changed. Forth, a proper description about this method should be provided in Line 176-177. I wonder whether there was a method to cite the reference from Aldrich or not.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer 1
The authors thank you for your response to our manuscript. The answers to your questions are below.
Sinserely,
from the team of authors
Dr. V,Ilves
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors report the effect of different annealing temperatures on the production of cerium fluoride nanoparticles. Furthermore, various properties were studied, such as colour, emission, volume and pore size, cytotoxicity, thermal properties and ferromagnetism and deep characterization of the materials using different techniques was performed.
In my opinion, the weakest points in this manuscript are the experimental section and the conclusions; however, as some justifications and descriptions can improve the manuscript, if the following issues are considered, I recommend accepting the paper with major revisions.
1) The english language needs to be improved. This issue is quite notorious in the abstract
2) The aim of the work is not clear in the abstract. Please make it clearer
3) Explain the meaning of all the abbreviations, for example, NPles. And sometimes, it appears as NPles and other times as NP. The authors should make it more coherent.
4) In the results and discussion, the authors state that mesoporous crystals were produced by the PEBE method. Still, I could not find more information about the synthesis method in the manuscript. It lacks crucial details on the experimental section about the production processes. A more structural description of the production process is needed to understand better what was performed and why. The materials and characterization section needs to be revised entirely.
5) The authors compare the synthesized nanoparticles with commercial ones, which is evident in the subtitles, but it is not clear in the main text. This should be clarified.
6) As the change of colour is being analyzed, some colourimetry analysis and reflectance spectroscopy should be performed to add information to the discussion of the colour results.
7) Figure 5 should be improved. It is hard to understand. For example, the red line does not have any correspondence. Were all the temperatures taken from the onset?
8) The PL spectra were taken by exciting at which wavelength?
9) It is unclear why you have two emission peaks for the Ce3+. The authors should explain this issue better. And in table 4, in the subtitle should be pointed out what is X2, X2 and A1/A2.
10) The authors made an extensive characterization of the developed materials; however, is still lacking a discussion combining all the obtained results.
11) I find the conclusions not very strong and a comparation with the commertial materials is still lacking. Not much is shown to be obtained from the study. This should be improved.
12) The references need to be checked. For example, on reference 23, I could only find the authors' names, and it seems that this reference is not linked to the information in the main text.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer 2
The authors thank you for your response to our manuscript.
The answers to your questions are below.
Sincerely,
from the team of authors
Dr. V. Ilves
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper presents the physicochemical characteristics of CeF3 nanopowder (NP) obtained by electron evaporation. The annealed NPs were evaluated using methods: XRD, HRTEM, DSC-TG, luminescence/ magnetic measurements. The degree of cytotoxicity of NP CeF3 to cell cultures was determined. The cubic phase CeO2 formed in NP CeF3 after annealing. The appearance of the oxide phase CeO2 led to an increase in the intensity of photoluminescence. Cathodoluminescence was not excited. The paramagnetic response of nanoparticles decreased with an increase in the annealing temperature. Cerium fluoride nanoparticles showed low cytotoxicity toward cancerous and non-cancerous cells. It is a well-written manuscript. The objective of this study is well-defined. The methodology is well written. The results and figures are well explained.
Minor Concern:
The authors performed an invitro cytotoxic assay with two different concentrations. It would be a good idea to perform this assay with 7 to 8 different concertation in 96 well assays.
Author Response
Dear reviewer 3
The authors thank you for your response to our manuscript.
The answers to your questions are below.
Sincerely,
from the team of authors
Dr. V. Ilves
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
