Herein, a facile one-pot solvothermal reaction was rationally designed to synthesize a carbon-doped golden wattle-like TiO2 microspheres structure. During the synthesis, growth and self-assembly of TiO2 single-crystal nanorods were successfully achieved simultaneously with in-situ carbon doping via employing only acetone as reaction medium and carbon source. The obtained sample exhibited remarkable photodegradation capability for ciprofloxacin (CIP) under visible light irradiation since the carbon doping ensured the product with excellent visible light response and prevented the electron-hole pairs recombination effectively, furthermore, its 1D nanorod building blocks and 3D hierarchical structure endowed the product with rapid charge carriers transportation and excellent light capture capability, all of which were beneficial to the photocatalytic activity of the product. In addition, calcination temperature during the synthesis process was proved to be essential for the properties of the final products, and the functional mechanism of the obtained TiO2 microspheres and plausible CIP photodegradation pathways during photocatalytic reaction were also investigated and proposed. Facile synthesis procedure and excellent visible light photocatalytic activity confirm the potential of the synthetic strategy explored in this work for the design of highly efficient carbon-doped TiO2 and its application in environmental purification. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.