A wheel-shaped gallium-sulfide molecular ring with enhanced photocatalytic activity via indium alloying

Abstract

Wheel-shaped molecular rings are one of the most striking types of molecular aggregates due to their naturally aesthetically appealing architecture, giant size and interesting physical properties and potential applications. Herein, unlike common supertetrahedral cluster-based main-group metal chalcogenides, we report an unprecedented wheel-shaped double-decker {Ga₂₄S₄₀} molecular ring (WSC-1) with an ∼1.6 nm external diameter, which is the first main-group metal sulfide nanoring and the largest ring in the family of inorganic metal sulfide molecular rings. Furthermore, indium was successfully introduced to obtain the first bimetallic main-group metal chalcogenide molecular ring (WSC-1-In), exhibiting enhanced photocatalytic dye degradation. This work is of great significance to expand the family of metal chalcogenide molecular rings and demonstrated the great potential of metal chalcogenide molecular rings in the application of photocatalysis.