Graphitic carbon nitride (CN) is an emerging photocatalyst with promising prospect, but presently it still falls short on photo catalytic efficiency and photoresponsive range. We herein constructed a novel ternary heterostructure by hybridization of conducting polymer and semiconductor with CN. The exfoliated two dimension CN nanosheets (CN-NSs) are superior to bulk CN as both catalysts and supporting materials. Most recently, there are few reports involving the construction of heterojunction photocatalysts using CN-NSs as supports. The improvement of charge separation efficiency, specific surface area and visible light harvesting is simultaneously achieved in such a novel ternary heterostructure due to the synergetic effect of polyaniline (PANI) and ZnO coupling. As a result, the CN-NS/PANI/ZnO photocatalyst possesses excellent visible photocatalytic performance for MB and 4-CP degradation with a rate constant of 0.026 and 0.0049 min(-1), which is about 3.6 and 3.3 times of CN, respectively. The enhanced mechanism is proposed based on the confirmation of (OH)-O-center dot and h(+) as main oxidative species. Overall, this work can not only yield high-efficient visible photocatalysts but also provide deeper insight into the enhanced mechanisms of CN-NS-based ternary heterostructure. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.