In this work, phenyl carbamate functionalized zinc oxide nanorods were fabricated on a cellulose filter paper and employed as a novel and low cost sorbent in a thin film microextraction (TFME) technique. The modified cellulose paper was applied for the extraction of three phenylurea herbicides from different water samples. Liquid chromatography with diode array UV-vis detection was used for analyte detection. Characterization of the fabricated paper-based TFME sorbent was performed by scanning electron microscopy and elemental analysis. The effect of significant experimental parameters in the TFME technique including type and volume of desorption solvent, desorption time, shaking rate for extraction and desorption, salt addition and extraction time were studied and optimized. The extraction capability of phenyl carbamate functionalized zinc oxide paper was also compared with the unmodified paper and papers modified with ZnO and phenyl isocyanate. The linear range of the method for neburon, monuron and linuron was in the range of 0.2–20, 0.5–50 and 0.2–20 μg L⁻¹, respectively. The detection limits were 0.04, 0.05 and 0.13 μg L⁻¹ for neburon, linuron and monuron, respectively. The precision of the method was less than 6.8% for all analytes. Film-to-film reproducibility varied between 8.1 and 10.8% (relative standard deviation). The method was validated for the determination of analytes in real water samples. Recoveries between 92 and 106% were achieved.