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With the discharge of large amount of organic pollutants and antibiotics into the water environment, the water cycle has been seriously polluted, and at the same time, various drug-resistant bacteria have emerged in succession, which poses a serious threat to human health. In recent years, photocatalytic nanomaterials have become a research hotspot in the antimicrobial area. In this study, AgBr/AgVO 3 photocatalysts were prepared by a hydrothermal process and an in situ growth method. The composites were tightly connected by the (501) plane of AgVO 3 and the (200) lattice plane of AgBr. The photocatalytic activity was tested by degrading Rhodamine B (RhB) solution under visible-light, and the result indicated that the photodegradation rate for RhB solution was 92.3% by the photocatalysis with 0.5AgBr/AgVO 3 and the photocatalytic performance of 0.5AgBr/AgVO 3 was improved compared to pure AgVO 3 and AgBr. In addition, more than 99.997% of E. coli , S. aureus , and P. aeruginosa cells were killed by the photocatalysis with 0.5AgBr/AgVO 3 within 30 min. These results demonstrated that the 0.5AgBr/AgVO 3 heterojunction photocatalyst could be widely used in the treatment of environmental pollution and in the antibacterial field., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)