Alumina supported CuO/ZnO is the commercial catalyst for methanol synthesis from syngas. Though so far, this catalyst has been regarded as the dominant catalyst for methanol synthesis. The catalyst is still facing some fundamental challenges such as the dispersion of active center CuO/ZnO. Meanwhile, to prepare this catalyst, large amount of nitrate precursor was used and produced lots of environmentally harmful wastewater. In the current work, a bimodal carbon channel-confined CuO/ZnO supported on mesoporous carbon catalyst was synthesized by using a simple impregnation method followed by ammonia hydrolysis and pyrolysis. The results demonstrated that the method we developed was an effective way to control the dispersion of metal oxides particles. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.