Research on the production of solar fuels and chemicals has rocketed over the past decade, with a wide variety of systems proposed to harvest solar energy and drive chemical reactions. In this Feature Article we have focused on hybrid molecule/semiconductor assemblies in both powder and supported materials, summarising recent systems and highlighting the enormous possibilities offered by such assemblies to carry out highly demanding chemical reactions with industrial impact. Of relevance is the higher selectivity obtained in visible light-driven organic transformations when using molecular catalysts compared to photocatalytic materials.

The photocatalytic oxidation of organic substrates in water using a diruthenium chromophore-catalyst dyad molecule can be tuned by the nature of the bridging ligand.

A luminescent ruthenium complex bearing two 2,6-di(quinolin-8-yl)-pyridine carboxylic acid (dqpCOOH) ligands has been successfully synthesised and fully characterised. The new metalloligand has been coordinated to zinc ions through the terminal carboxylate groups using a one-step solvothermal method, to give a multimetallic photoactive 1D coordination polymer, RuÀ (dqpCOO)À ZnÀ (OOCH) 2 . Through use of X-ray crystallography, advanced microscopy techniques as well as photophysical studies, we have extensively characterised the coordination polymer. The optical properties of the ruthenium complex and corresponding coordination polymer show that the material experiences a dramatic increase in photostability compared to the free parent metalloligand, in solution. Electrochemical measurements of the coordination polymer also confirm the Ru II /Ru III redox couple is maintained in the polymeric network. The development of this material gives a new strategy in the design of novel photoactive materials as multimetallic building blocks for their use in light-based 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.