To further increase the photoelectric efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), enhancing the light adsorption of photoanode and suppressing the recombination of photo-generated charges are of great importance. Motivated by this, a novel and efficient three-component CNF/TiO2/Au heterostructure was successfully constructed and employed as an alternative photoanode material. The as-prepared CNF/TiO2/Au is characterized by conductive carbon nanofiber (CNF) core, uniform TiO2 outer shell assembled by upright nanorods, and surface modification with well-dispersed Au nanoparticles. To demonstrate the potential application of such material in DSSC, a comparison of photoelectric properties with commercial P25 and binary composite CNF/TiO2 was carried out. By contrast, the ternary composite CNF/TiO2/Au exhibited the highest short-circuit photocurrent density of 15.47 mA cm(-2) and photoelectric conversion efficiency of 6.45%, which is about 31% higher than that of the commercial P25-based DSSCs. The great improvement of photoelectric properties for ternary composite CNF/TiO2/Au might be attributed to not only the conspicuous light adsorption ability derived from the sufficient dye loading of CNF/TiO2/Au and the surface plasmon resonance of Au nanoparticles, but also the reduced recombination endowed by the conductive CNF core and the heterojunctions at the interface. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.