I am trying to defend my project "Synthesis and Detection of Nanoparticles using Dual-Pulse Femtosecond Laser-Induced

Breakdown Spectroscopy" and reply the reviewer comments. Could you help in the following comment.

This proposal has two main objectives: (1) the use of a short pulse, femtosecond (fs) laser to generate

nanoparticles by ablating a target and (2) use of the same laser to detect and identify these particles by the

method of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, known as LIBS.

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While both claims are defensible, the proposal is weak for several reasons. From an applied standpoint,

which is the main thrust of the proposal, the improvements likely to be realized using fs lasers are marginal.

Regarding objective (1), while it is true that particles produced with fs lasers have different properties than those produced with ns pulses, it is unlikely that such effects will be competitive with chemical synthetic protocols. Nanoparticles used today in such areas as medicine, sensing, nanoelectronics, and photovoltaic cells have very sophisticated chemical and physical requirements, such as multilayer structures used for drug delivery or aligned nanorod ensembles used in dye-sensitized photovoltaic cells. While there may be specialized cases where laser-generated nanoparticles are preferable, for most applications this methodology is not very competitive with chemical synthesis. Regarding objective (2), ns-LIBS is already capable of

detecting nanoparticles below the threshold for health hazards, as documented by ref. 54 as well as in a paper by Dutouquet et al. (Spectrochimica Acta B, 63, 1183 (2008)). In light of this success, and considering the much lower cost of a ns-based detector, the motivation for using a fs-based detector is weakened.

A further weakness of the proposal is the absence of a plan for quantitative measurement, which is a consequence of using the same laser to generate and detect the particles. For realizing objective (2), it is necessary to use a well-defined mono-dispersed source of nanoparticles to calibrate the detection sensitivity.

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