A novel room temperature solid-state chemical synthesis was introduced to successfully fabricate CeO2 samples, coupled by a polyethylene glycol 400 (PEG 400)/cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB)/sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). The as-prepared products were characterized by XRD, TEM, SEM, BET and UV. A study of photocatalytic degradation of the methylene blue MB under UV illumination has been carried out. It is indicated that the samples exhibit excellent photocatalytic activity. Besides, the samples assisted with surfactants possess higher photocatalytic activity than the sample without any surfactants, wherein the sample with SDS as an additive shows the highest photocatalytic activity, which is able to reach 89.6% MB degradation ratio within 60 min illumination. Moreover, the effects of important operational parameters such as initial MB concentration, catalyst loading and pH were also investigated. The above sample under the optimum conditions obtained the maximum MB degradation ratio up to 96.5%, which is higher than that of the commercial TiO2 P25 under the same conditions. It can be concluded that CeO2 will be a potential photocatalyst in the application of organic pollutant. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.