During the gelling process of precursor preparation,three different solvents (ethanol,ethylene glycol and water) were used to prepare the CuZnAlSi slurry catalysts by complete liquid phase technology,in order to investigate the gelling solvent effects on the catalytic performance for one-step synthesis of DME.The catalysts were characterized by XRD, TEM, N2-adsorption, H2-TPR, NH3-TPD and XPS.The results indicate that the catalysts prepared by different gelling solvents obviously affected Cu0 particle size of active metal,surface acid amount and acidity,the relative proportion of surface elements,which are the key factors causing different catalytic performances.The small Cu particles and surface acidity are highlighted as being responsible for the excellent catalytic activity and selectivity of products respectively.The catalyst using EtOH as a dispersion medium of CuZnAl precipitate and dehydration components to form sol-gel resulted in the best activity and no obvious deactivation.The average CO conversion and selectivity of DME were 40.77％ and 60.69％,respectively,during the evaluation period of 85 h.