Many chalcogenide compounds are formed from a diverse set of primary building blocks that include binary salts of alkali metal chalcogenides that are reacted with metals or metal salts in a variety of solutions and reaction conditions to form highly-diverse structures with varying and interesting physical properties. This review expands upon an earlier review by our group in 1997 that incorporates many of the more recent studies on the speciation of polysulfides, polyselenides, and polytellurides in aqueous and non-aqueous solutions and what has been learned in the intervening 20 years. We introduce comparisons of solution speciation across different spectroscopic platforms and provide further evidence for the use of electrospray mass spectrometry, in conjunction with complementary techniques that offer a glimpse of possible reaction compositions that lead to new materials.

许多硫族化物化合物是由多种不同的主要结构单元形成的，其中包括碱金属硫族化物的二元盐，其在各种溶液和反应条件下与金属或金属盐反应形成具有多种多样且有趣的物理性质的高度多样的结构。本综述是在我们小组于1997年进行的较早综述的基础上进行的，该综述结合了许多有关水溶液和非水溶液中多硫化物，聚硒化物和聚碲化物形态的最新研究，以及在过去20年中所学到的内容。我们介绍了不同光谱平台之间溶液形态的比较，并为使用电喷雾质谱法提供了进一步的证据，