Synthesis of Indium Sulfide/Zinc Oxide Composites Films and their Photocatalytic Activities

Indium sulfide and zinc oxide (In2S3-ZnO) films have successfully synthesized by doctor blading method coupling with low temperature precipitation-reflux rout. The weight ratio of In2S3 was varied from 0-70 wt.%. Physical characterization results obtained from various analytical techniques exhibit the well crystallinity phase of cubic β-In2S3 and wurtzite ZnO structure from XRD patterns. TEM micrograph of 35% In2S3-ZnO sample showed the small ZnO particles are embedded into β-In2S3. The obtained results exhibited the phase well crystallinity of cubic β-In2S3. A strong adsorption spectra shifted toward visible light region and the narrower optical band gap results of In2S3-ZnO composite films suggesting that synthesized samples could be used as the visible-light-driven photocatalyst. The photocatalytic activity of rhodamine B had been investigated over entire composite films under visible light illumination. It can be seen that the entire In2S3-ZnO composite catalyst films revealed degradation of rhodamine B performance obviously higher than pure ZnO and pure In2S3. Moreover, the highest photocatalytic activity was found from 35% wt. In2S3-ZnO film which showed 69.5% degradation within 4 h under visible light irradiation.