A team led by chemists at Stanford University and SLAC has unraveled a longstanding mystery that brings them one step closer to a cleaner, more energy-efficient way to make methanol, an important industrial chemical used in products such as paints, plastics and glues.

Liu acknowledged for wide-ranging work in energy materials, catalysis, carbon sequestration, material in extreme conditions and scientific big data mining.

Merging two powerful 3-D X-ray techniques, researchers revealed new details of a process known as metal poisoning that clogs the pores of catalyst particles used in gasoline production, causing them to lose effectiveness.

Researchers at SLAC and Stanford have created a nanostructured device, about half the size of a postage stamp, that harnesses more of the sun's spectrum of light to disinfect water much faster than with ultraviolet rays alone.