Rich-oxygen vacancy TiO2(B)/nitrogen-doped carbon nanosheets boost photocatalytic activity under visible light

•Rich-oxygen vacancy TiO2(B)/nitrogen-doped carbon nanosheets (OVs-TiO2(B)/NC) are designed.•The OVs-TiO2(B)/NC (20 mg) can rapidly remove the ∼90 % of TC antibiotics (50 mg/L, 100 mL) in 1 h under visible light.•The introduction of OVs and the incorporation of NC suppress the recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. At present, the pollutions of tetracycline (TC) antibiotics in wastewater treatments are still an urgent problem to be solved. Herein, the novel TiO2(B) nanosheeets with rich oxygen vacancies (OVs) anchored on N-doped carbon nanosheeets (OVs-TiO2(B)/NC) are constructed for the photocatalytic degradation of TC under visible light. The introduction of OVs and the incorporation of NC nanosheets can promote the absorption capacity and suppress the recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Consequently, as-prepared OVs-TiO2(B)/NC (20 mg) as photocatalyst show strong adsorption and superior photocatalytic performances for the degradation of TC antibiotics (50 mg/L) with ∼90.05 % under visible light irradiation (300 W of Xe lamp) for 1 h.