Effects of Polyurethane Substrate Pre-Treatment on Pulsed Cathodic Arc Deposited DLC Films

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article focuses on the investigation of tribological behaviour of coated and uncoated polyurethane rubbers. The authors analysed the coefficient of friction and surface mofphology of specimens with different pretreatments.

Although this manuscript is relative short the results presented can be considered original. The manuscript is well structured and prepared according to Guide of Authors. The graphical quality of figures is also acceptable.

The minor drawbacks and criticisms of the manuscript itemized below:

Line. 40. Reference [11] should be identified as "Aoki and Ohtake".

The entire manuscript: There are no words "cathotic arc" and "adhension" in my English dictionary. There are many other typo errors in this manuscript.

line 94: Unit of a speed must be improved.

The entire manuscript: many voices are used to identify the tables and figures: "...have been listed in Table 1.", "....are shown in Figure...", "....were shown in Figure....". In this context, the manuscript must be corrected.

The caption of the figure 1 suggests that this figure presents Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) of specimens. In fact, this figure presents "SEM micrographs" of specimens. See also captions of figs. 2 and 3.

line 163:"that that"

Caption of the figure 7 is very confused.

The details of the patent in reference no. 20 must be specified.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

• Diamond-like carbon (DLC) films were deposited by means of pulsed cathodic arc 13 deposition on pretreated polyurethane (PU) rubber substrates. In rubber always the same problem like in other cases. DLC structures are weak when surface defects appears, and you must address it properly. Paper like this are very interesting bit it has one flaw, preparation of surfaces before and after treatment are key techniques, and only a few are working properly. See to include in discussion: Behaviour of PVD coatings in the turning of austenitic stainless steels, Procedia Engineering 63, 133-141 and Enhanced performance of nanostructured coatings for drilling by droplet elimination, Materials and Manufacturing Processes 31 (5), 593-602. In my opinion 1/3 of papers about coatings lack of this real knowledge, because the authors in these paper really work in industry, please use this knowledge form now on. Hundreds of SEM and analysis is are worthless without a surface preparation.
• Can you include some application of the concept?
• Formals aspects are good, images are also interesting. Perhaps some ideas about behavior of the systema under bending would ne interesting.
• Figure shows some scattering values, please comment one sentence about that.
• Another major difficulty in the preparation of the DLC film on polyurethane rubber is 62 plasticizing additives in the rubber. This interesting, please give some example with negative effects

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf