BiOCl has recently drawn considerable attention for its unique and excellent optical, electrical, mechanical, magnetic properties and photocatalytic performances. We modified the conventional solvothermal method to a simple, rapid and environment-friendly microwave-assisted method to prepare high-quality BiOCl nanoplates, which not only exhibited good purity, crystallinity but also possessed an excellent adsorption activity and visible-light photocatalytic activity for dye Rhodamine B (RhB). The prepared composite was characterized through Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) and UV-vis-DRS to analyze the morphology, crystal structure, surface properties and optical property. The results showed that as-produced BiOCl nanoplates had a high purity, crystallinity and a high percentage of exposed (001} facet, and exhibited a strong adsorption and photocatalytic activity with the adsorption capacity of 6.05-8.81 mgRhB/gBiOCl. Moreover, it was found that the photocatalytic degradation for RhB by using as-produced BiOCl agreed with zero-order reaction kinetics, and the reaction rate constant k was firstly evaluated to be 1.11 h(-1) tat 22 degrees C. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l. All rights reserved.