Diverse morphologies of porous CuO were fabricated using surfactant as soft template via a solution combustion method. It is found that a mixture of glycine and ethylene glycol (EG) (1:1) is much more favorable than individual fuel for the fabrication of CuO. All as-synthesized products are surfactant indispensable monoclinic CuO phase. The CuO synthesized without any surfactant is foam network, however, it evolves into basic flake-like morphology with different pores and assembling microstructures in the presence of surfactant. We believe that the different distributions of anions and cations originated from the effect of surfactant lead to the variations of CuO morphology. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.