In this present paper, the copper-coated magnetic carbon (CCMC) was fabricated by pre-deposition of ferric ferrous oxides onto carbon particles and followed by the chemical deposition of copper. Galvanic couples composed of zero-valent iron and copper-coated magnetic carbon (Fe-0/CCMC) were employed for the treatment of simulative wastewater containing p-nitrophenol (PNP). Under the optimized conditions such as magnetic induction intensity, mass ratio of Fe-0/CCMC and initial pH, it was found that the degradation rate of PNP greatly increased due to the enhancement of the internal microelectrolysis of Fe-0/CCMC couples in the intermittent magnetic field. In addition, the half-life value of COD of simulative wastewater containing PNP was used as a parameter to evaluate the degradation efficiency of PNP by interior microelectrolysis of zero-valent iron (Fe-0), zero-valent iron/carbon (Fe-0/C), zero-valent iron/magnetic carbon (Fe-0/MC) and zero-valent iron/copper-coated magnetic carbon (Fe-0/CCMC), respectively. It showed that the degradation efficiency of PNP by interior microelectrolysis of Fe-0/CCMC was the highest among them. The degradation process could be described as a pseudo-first-order model and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer (LC-MS) analysis showed that amino-phenol was an intermediate during the degradation of PNP. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.