Visible-light-driven reactions for the synthesis of sulfur dioxide-inserted compounds: generation of S-F, S-O, and S-N bonds

Sulfur dioxide-containing compounds such as sulfonyl fluorides, sulfonyl esters, and sulfonyl amides are important structural frameworks in many natural products, pharmaceuticals, and organic compounds. Thus, synthesis of these molecules is a very valuable research topic in organic chemistry. Various synthetic methods to introduce SO₂ groups into the structure of organic compounds have been developed for the synthesis of biologically and pharmaceutically useful compounds. Recently, visible-light-driven reactions were carried out to create SO₂-X (X = F, O, N) bonds, and their effective synthetic approaches were demonstrated. In this review, we summarized recent advances in visible-light-mediated synthetic strategies for generation of SO₂-X (X = F, O, N) bonds for various synthetic applications along with proposed reaction mechanisms.