Cuprous oxide is a promising candidate for photocatalysis. But its photocatalytic properties still need to be much improved for applications. Herein, we report a kind of heterostructures (HCs), i.e. CuO/Cu2O HCs. Different morphologies of CuO, i.e. nanowires, nanotetrahedra and nanospheres, have been controllably prepared on Cu2O cubes/octahedra by a facile wet chemical method. All the obtained CuO/Cu2O HCs have significantly improved photocatalytic activity and stability as compared to Cu2O. Especially, the nanowires CuO/Cu2O have shown a specific reaction rate ca. 1.6 mol min 1 g(-1), 260 times as high as pristine Cu2O and 4 times as Au/Cu2O. And the nanospheres CuO/Cu2O have maintained over 95% of photocatalytic activity after 7 cycles. So, distinct morphologies of CuO have resulted in dramatic effects on photocatalytic properties of CuO/Cu2O HCs. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.