The removal of dyes in wastewater has been of much interest in the recent decades because dyes are stable, toxic and even potentially carcinogenic, and their release into environment causes serious environmental, aesthetical, and health problems. In the current work, indium-based coordination polymer particles (In-CPPs) have been fabricated via a facile solvothermal synthesis without any template or surfactant. In-CPPs are composed of hierarchical nanostructures assembled from abundant nanoplates with thickness of about 20 nm. Owing to their high BET surface area and pore volume, In-CPPs exhibit excellent adsorption capability for Congo red with a maximum capacity of 577 mg g(-1), which was higher than that of most materials reported to now. In-CPPS can also be outstanding adsorbents for removing other dyes such as acid chrome blue K, brilliant red GR and brilliant green. Furthermore, after calcinations in air In-CPPs can be converted to morphology-preserved porous In2O3 products which can detect NOx gas in air at room temperature. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.