Titanium dioxide (TiO2) doped with visible-light-responsive metal oxides has been widely reported for improving the visible light absorption performance of TiO2 and its photocatalytic activity. The metal oxides could function as 'charge-carrier traps' that transport electrons from TiO2 through the hetero-junction of the TiO2-metal oxides. In this work, the common transition metal oxides, i.e. FeOx, CuOx, NiO, CoOx and ZnO, were doped onto MWCNT@TiO2 core-shell nanocomposites. The effects of the metal oxide dopants on the photoactivity of the core-shell nanocomposites on CO2 reduction were studied. Characterization with diffuse-reflectance UV-vis showed significant improvement on visible light absorption after doping MWCNT@TiO2 with CuOx, FeOx and CoOx with the adsorption band-edge position red-shifted into the wavelength range of 480-630 nm. CuO-MWCNT@TiO2 appeared to be the most active one among all the studied photocatalysts, achieving a total methane formation of 0.93 mu mol/g-catalyst. (C) 2014 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.