Review of the Nanostructuring and Doping Strategies for High-Performance ZnO Thermoelectric Materials

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This review paper summarized the approaches to improve the thermoelectric properties of ZnO, including nanostructure design and doping. This review fits the requirements for publication in crystal. Before considering publication some minor points need to be addressed:

1. The title of “Review of the strategies for high-performance ZnO thermoelectric materials.” is too broad. In this manuscript, the author only summarized two methods to improve the thermoelectric properties of ZnO.

2. I noticed that most of the literature cited by the author was published 2018 years ago. Authors should cite the most recent research, particularly from the years 2019 to 2022.

3. What is the development prospect of ZnO as a thermoelectric material?

4. In lines of 259, “As the electrical conductivity (μ)” should be corrected as “As the electrical conductivity (?)”.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The review of Suraya Sulaiman and coauthors is about ZnO and its application as thermoelectric material. Review contains 69 references, analytical graphs and I liked the parts about Al, Ga, Ni, Bi, Sn – doped ZnO. References are relevant, but their choice sometimes raises questions like in Line 62 refs [13-18] explain the meaning of only one equation, the novelty of the links could also be higher. In my opinion, the content of the review in places repeats existing ones, however I recommend this review to publish in Crystals as a part of special issue "Novel ZnO-Based Nanostructures: Synthesis, Characterization and Applications".

It was hard to read the review because of untidy/inaccuracy refs list due to the lack of doi, pages, etc. Like for ex

46 Yahya, N. (2011) Carbon and Oxide nanostructures: Synthesis, Characterisation and applications, Carbon an dOxidde Nanostructures, Synthesis, characterisation and Applications.

59 Liang, X. (2013) Structure and Thermoelectric Properties of ZnO Based Materials Structure and Thermoelectric Properties of ZnO.

After updating the list of references, this article can be accepted

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx