Phenol is an important source of organic pollution in the environment, which can cause serious damage to human health and ecosystems. Therefore, it is crucial to develop sensitive, accurate, and rapid methods for detecting phenol. Herein, boron-doped carbon dots (CDB) were used as a probe to construct a resonance Rayleigh scattering-energy transfer (RRS-ET) sensor. CDB was prepared quickly by a normal pressure microwave irradiation method, and characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), infrared spectroscopy (IR) and other techniques. The characterization results show that the prepared CDB has good water solubility and stability. Under NH4Cl-NH3<middle dot>H2O buffer conditions, phenol reacts with 4-aminoantipyrine (AP) to form receptor of indole aminoantipyrine (IA) that can be adsorbed on the donor CD(B )surface to exhibit RRS-ET effect, and it makes the RRS peak intensity decreased linearly at 495 nm. Under the optimized conditions, the decreased RRS intensity is linear to phenol concentration in the range of 2.5 x 10(-2)-8.00 mu g/mL, with a detection limit of 9 x 10(-3 )mu g/mL. The prepared sensor showed good selectivity, high sensitivity, wide linear range, low detection limit, and good repeatability. The results of the detection of phenol in waste water are satisfactory, and the recovery is 99.8-107% with the relative standard deviation (RSD) of 2.48-3.93%, indicating the good feasibility of the established method in waste water sample analysis.