LAUSR

Abstract Background Designing and fabricating an efficient heterostructured photocatalyst for degrading organic pollutants is a major concern for environmental remediation researchers. In that series we fabricated a P25-TiO2/In2O3 (PT/In) heterostructured nanocomposite via the facile ultrasonication and sol-gel synthesis method. Methods In both solution and gas-phase methods, the photocatalytic efficiency of the obtained PT/In nanocomposite was investigated. DRIFT-IR was measured at room temperature with the effect of adsorbed ethanol molecules, which would be used as a different approach to confirm the photocatalytic reaction mechanism. Significant Findings Under UV-Visible light illumination, the PT/In-4 nanocomposite was found to be an excellent photocatalyst for degrading Acid Blue (AB) dye. The calculated degradation rate constant (k) of PT/In-4 was 4.0 × 10−2 min−1, which was 13.3 and 5.7 times higher than that of PT-4 (0.3 × 10−2 min−1) and bare In2O3 (0.7 × 10−2 min−1) materials, respectively. The enhancement in photocatalytic performance is owing to the synergistic effect of the heterojunction between TiO2 and In2O3 and a reduction in the recombination rate. Furthermore, the PT/In-4 nanocomposite showed high stability even after five consecutive cycles. The photocatalytic mechanism was proposed based on experimental results obtained through the gas phase photocatalytic studies via DRIFT-IR technique.