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.