The nano-TiO2 powder was synthesized using wet chemical method and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and transmission electron microscope (TEM). The photodegradation of aqueous methyl orange and phenol under the irradiation of visible, ultraviolet (UV), and UV + visible lights was used to evaluate the photocatalytic activity of nano-TiO2 powder prepared. It is found that the photocatalysis under UV and visible light irradiation simultaneously is much faster than the sum of that solely induced by UV light and visible light. UV-vis spectroscopy, photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used to investigate the physical cause of the enhancement of photocatalytic activity induced by UV + visible two-beam light irradiation. A photocatalytic mechanism based on the d-d transition of photoinduced electrons on surface located at conduction band was suggested to explain the experimental result. It is considered that this is a novel method to utilize visible light in the photocatalysis by using undoped TiO2 material. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.