The Quest for Sulfur-Containing Photoactive Materials: Molecular Precursors, Structures and Applications

This Minireview summarises the most relevant work on sulfur-containing systems and provides direction towards the preparation of novel photoactive materials. This contribution overviews the synthesis of sulfur-containing organic ligands and metal complexes and their incorporation in surfaces, nanoparticles and frameworks, with the aim to highlight the most relevant applications of such materials. We focus on the use of sulfur-containing anchoring groups to prepare advanced materials, although examples in which thiols provide decisive properties are also included, for example, stabilization of gold nanoparticles. From these, we provide a series of research directions that we and others are currently exploring to prepare new photoactive materials containing sulfur. These materials will take advantage of the plasmonic properties of thiol-capped gold and silver nanoparticles and their use to enhance energy-conversion technologies.