| Summary: | Due to its favorable excited-state physicochemical properties, indium oxide (In<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>) has widely captured attention as a potentially great photocatalyst. However, an inferior charge separation efficiency limits its application. Recently, an increasing amount of evidence has demonstrated that the construction of surface defects is an effective strategy to boost photocatalytic performances. In this work, a ruthenium (Ru) species was successfully introduced into the lattice of In<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> nanoparticles through co-precipitation and thermal treatment. It was found that the content of surface oxygen vacancies was directly related to the amount of Ru<sup>3+</sup> doping, which further determines the separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers. As a result, the 0.5% Ru-In<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> samples enriched with oxygen vacancies exhibit dramatically enhanced photocatalytic dehalogenation performances of decabromodiphenyl ether and hexabromobenzene, about four times higher than that of the pure In<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> nanoparticles. This study emphasized the significance of the surface defects of the photocatalyst and may provide a valuable strategy to prepare highly active photocatalysts for photocatalytic dehalogenation reactions.
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