The carbon doped TiO2 powders have been successfully prepared by a facile calcination assisted solvothermal method using titanium tetra-n-butoxide or TiCl3 together with ethanol as starting materials without the addition of any other extra carbon sources. The physicochemical properties of as-synthesized samples were characterized by the X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy, UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, BET specific surface area, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Besides, the effects of post solvothermal reaction heating temperature and raw materials on the carbon doping in TiO2 have been investigated. The experimental results showed that carbon has been doped into TiO2 lattice by replacing the oxygen site with the production of oxygen vacancy. In addition, carbon doped TiO2 samples exhibited not only very good destruction ability of NO gas but also excellent degradation ability of methyl orange solution under the visible light much superior to P25 and N-TiO2. The employed method in this work provided a favorable evidence that the effect of carbon doping on the properties of samples should be taken into consideration when preparing TiO2 based photocatalyst by a hydrothermal or solvothermal method with the assist of calcination. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.