Effect of deposition runs on the physical properties of In2S3 chemically synthesized for photocatalytic application

Polycrystalline In2S3 thin films have been prepared using low cost chemical bath deposition technique on SnO2/Pyrex substrate. In this work, we have investigated the effect of multilayer deposition on physical proprieties of the In2S3 thin films from 1 to 6 deposition runs with the aim of optimizing them for photocatalytic application. The structure, the surface morphology and the optical properties of In2S3 films were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Atomic force microscopy (AFM) and spectrophotometer. The crystallinity seems to be improved as the film thickness increases. After three deposition runs, a remarkable change in the shape of the grains is observed and the band gap energy is found to be about 2.52 eV. On the other hand, In2S3 thin film prepared using 5 deposition run exhibits an excellent performance as sensing film along with a whole degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.