Content of review 1, reviewed on February 01, 2025

Lee et al have demonstrated a novel plasma treated graphitic carbon nitride which is integrated with SnO2 to improve the charge extraction, and minimizes defect-assisted recombination, thus improves the PCE, This is claimed because of liquid phase, low-temperature atmospheric pressure plasma treatment that significantly enhances the structural, electronic, and interfacial properties of graphitic carbon nitride . This manuscript is well written and claims are well supported. However, here are few suggestions to improve it further.

Comments:
“The treated dispersion, as shown in the schematic and vial images, exhibited a clear and transparent solution, indicating significant size reduction has occurred along with a more stable suspension was achieved compared to untreated GCN.”

The “clear and transparent solution” is may be due to the fact that the liquid phase, low-temperature atmospheric pressure plasma treatment is actively decomposing and fragmenting the GCN nanosheets and making into more soluble functionalized component (-OH, -NO2,-COOH, -NO etc). I can suggest to collect NMR and mass spec data before and after plasma treatment.

“GCN nanosheets into smaller size uniform nanoparticles which were dispersed
in a solution, enhancing the surface area and improving dispersibility in water.”
- Please provide TEM date to compare the size and uniformity of nanoparticles before and after plasma treatment or provide high resolution SEM images.

“Plasma treatment also introduced surface modifications on GCN, including the transformation of the triazine structure into the graphitic structure with possible oxygen species incorporation, which improved the electrical conductivity as well as providing an anchoring site for the defect sites in the SnO2 layers, ultimately tailoring the physicochemical properties of GCN.” – Could you please provide some evidence for this claim? Please provide evidence for the “improved the electrical conductivity” by doing conductivity measurement (IV cure, 4-point probe) of thin film.
How much improvement defects of SnO2 layers? Also defect improvement could be done by other ways; for example simply treating with ozone.
Please provide PL to show actual reduction in defects/recombination and improvement in charge collection.

Source

    © 2025 the Reviewer.

References

    Minwoo, L., Mei, A. E. Y., William, T., Cheng, W. P., Yong, N. T., Young, L. S., Sun-woo, K., A., G. M., Xiaojing, H., Sung, Y. J., Han, S. D. 2025. Hybrid SnO2/g-C3N4 layers with plasma-induced modifications for enhanced charge transport in perovskite solar cells. Journal of Materials Chemistry A.