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by
  • Sohyeon Yang 1,
  • Mayura Veerana 2 and
  • Youngmee Kim 1,*
  • et al.

Reviewer 1: Anonymous Reviewer 2: Anonymous Reviewer 3: Anonymous

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article under title “Addition of 4, 4ʹ-azopyridine can enhance the antifungal activity of copper(II)-MOF” the authors have synthesized copper metal organic framework (Cu-MOF) containing glutarate 11 (Glu) and 4,4ʹ-azopyridine (AZPY) by a solvothermal reaction. They utilized different experimental methods and investigated different properties. The study is interesting but has following drawback that’s why I recommend revising the manuscript.    

  1. There are so many grammatical and technical mistakes in the abstract and throughout the manuscript.
  2. The title is not informative and technical
  3. The abstract is not written appropriate there are grammatical errors re-write
  4. In abstract different acronyms are not defined
  5. Re-write Figure 2 caption appropriate
  6. Conclusions need to be re-write more technical

When above corrections are done, the paper would be suitable for publication in Applied Sciences.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments

 The submitted manuscript is focussed on the antifungal action of three-dimensional (3D) copper metal organic framework (Cu-MOF) containing glutarate (Glu) and 4,4’-azopyridine (AZPY), prepared by a solvothermal reaction.

The manuscript has to be revised, since in the experimental section many details were missed and they have to be added in order to make all the procedures reproducible; similarly, the Results and Discussion section has to be improved, since many shown data were not described and discussed.

Moreover, the originality has to be better evidenced at the end of the Introduction section.

Finally, a deep English grammar revision is strongly recommended.

Specific remarks are listed below point by point.

Abstract

  • A contextualization has to be added as abstract incipit in order to focalise on the paper topic.

Keywords

- The chosen keywords (i.e. antifungal activity; metal-organic frameworks (MOFs); 4,4-azopyridine; glutaric acid) have to be reported in a more logical orde (i.e. materials, processing, characterisation, properties, application). Moreover, they do not cover all the manuscript content and further ones have to be added.

  1. Introduction
    - For the MOF applications, more references could be cited, including “Eu-doped titania nanofibers: Processing, thermal behaviour and luminescent properties. Journal of nanoscience and nanotechnology, 10(8), 5183-5190” and “Core–shell Zn-doped TiO 2–ZnO nanofibers fabricated via a combination of electrospinning and metal–organic chemical vapour deposition. CrystEngComm, 12(11), 3858-3865”.

- It is strongly suggested to highlight the originality and added value of the present work with respect to the Literature and to the previous authors’work.

- The following conclusion “We found that Cu-MOF containing an AZPY ligand has enhanced antifungal activity than the constructed Cu-MOFs and Co-CPs in our previous studies [37, 38].” has to be removed from the Introduction section, since they sound more appropriate for the Abstract or Conclusions one.

- It is recommendable to indicate at the end of the Introduction section the main employed characterisation techniques in order to achieve the indicated purpose.

  1. Materials and Methods

2.1. Instrumentation

- This paragraph only the used instrumentations have to be cited, whereas the Authors have to be specified all the conditions for every characterisation in other paragraphs, such as the sample weight, temperature range, dwelling time, heating and cooling rates and gas flow rate for TGA, details about the analysis of the Cu-MOF elemental compositions and for ICP-MS measurements, 2Theta range, time per step, step size, source for PXRD, the preparation of samples for observation at SEM, the conditions for UV-Vis spectrophotometer measurements.

2.2. Preparation of [Cu2(Glu)2(AZPY)]·3H2O (Cu-MOF)

- More details about all the used reagents have to be added, such as the purity and the supplier.

- The mixing time and rpm have to be specified.

- The washings number and the drying procedure have to be reported.

-The sentence Anal. Calcd for dried [Cu2(C5H6O4)2(C10H8N4)] (571.49): C, 42.03; H, 3.53; N, 9.80%. Found; C, 41.78; H, 3.81; N, 10.39%.” has to be rewritten since it is not clear.

- It is strongly suggested to use specific nomenclature for the produced powders, since the Authors used Cu-MOF for both the powder synthesised in this work and that synthesised in the previous paper. Please, replace it throughout all the manuscript text.

2.3. X-ray crystallography

- The time per step and step size have to be indicated, as well as the source.

  1. Results and discussion

3.1. Structure description

- This paragraph has to be improved in order to deeply describe and discuss all the shown data and results, comparing them with literature.

- The considerations “The weight loss of 8.26% was attributed to 3 solvent water molecules (calc. 8.63%), and Cu-MOF is formulated as  [Cu2(C5H6O4)2(C10H8N4)]·3(H2O). Cu-MOF is stable up to 271°, and it is decomposed with a weight loss of 49.51% attributed to glutarates (calc. 41.6%).” have to be supported with proper references.

- For XRD, the used JCPDS card number has to be specified both within the text and in the related Figure.

- The shown XRD patterns have to be described and discussed.

  1. Conclusions

The Conclusions section has to be expanded, adding significant numerical data and results, to support the reported considerations and conclusions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors synthesized three-dimensional (3D) copper metal organic framework (Cu-MOF) containing glutarate (Glu) and 4,4’-azopyridine (AZPY) by a solvothermal reaction. Glutarates bridge paddle-wheel Cu2 dinuclear units to form 2D layers, and these layers are connected by AZPY to form a 3D framework. The manuscript is well organized. The presented paper is interesting, but the following corrections should be done before publishing.
- The abstract and conclusion need to be highly concise and quantitative.
- Please check the grammar of the manuscript.
Line 48: Recently, the antifungal activity of Cu-MOFs and Co-MOFs has ....... have should be used.
Line 9: 2.4. Fungal stains and antifungal test ........ strains
Line 112: new PDB, which adjusted the final concentration to 108 cells/mL. For A. niger culture,..... , In part 2.4, how can you adjust the final concentrations as 108 cells/spores per mL?
which adjusted the final concentration to 108 spores/mL.??
Line 128: All plates were photographed. Please refer to the figure.
Line 129: 2.5. Measurement of the level of H2O2 and NOx..... levels of H2O2 and NOx

Please add the following current references related to the studies in this area.
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09205063.2021.1892472
-  https://doi.org/10.1111/jam.14859
-  https://ssrn.com/abstract=3865991

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments

The Authors followed almost all the reviewers’ suggestions.

Some minor revisions have to be applied.

, as reported below.

  1. Materials and Methods

2.1. Instrumentation

- This paragraph has not been revised as requested.

- Specific paragraphs about every characterization have to be added.

2.3. X-ray crystallography

- The used instrument seems different with respect to that described in the Paragraph 2.1.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf