Conventional photocatalysts for degrading pollutants are limited because of the rapid recombination of electron-hole pair, difficulty in separation and recovery, and low efficiency in utilizing the visible light. To improve the adsorption capacity of the photocatalyst and reduce electron-hole recombination rate, βCD was anchored onto the porous activated carbon (AC) and then combined with ZnO/ZnSe to prepare βCD-AC-ZnO/ZnSe. The ZnO was a quasi-hexahedron shape in the ZnO/ZnSe heterojunction and was tightly integrated with the βCD-AC, which could improve the transfer ability of the photogenerated carrier. Considering the synergistic effect of βCD-AC and ZnO/ZnSe, the UV absorption edge was red shifted, and the lifetime of the electrons-hole pairs was prolonged. Thus, the photocatalytic degradation ration of βCD-AC-ZnO/ZnSe reached 82% under visible light, which was about 1.8 and 4.2 times higher than those of the virgin heterojunction and AC-ZnO/ ZnSe, respectively. βCD-AC-ZnO/ZnSe exhibited excellent disinfection potential that 3.5 log Escherichia coli cells were killed for 120 min. The highefficiency visible-light photocatalytic performance was demonstrated, and the •O 2À played a main active role in the photocatalytic removal of pollutants. The present research provided a valuable route for the fabrication of photocatalyst for real-world applications.