Keywords: Copper / Sulfur / Selenium / Tellurium / ClustersThe investigation of coinage metal molecular clusters bridged by chalcogen atoms represents an area of ever increasing activity in recent chemical and material science research. This is largely due to the relatively high ionic and even higher electric conductivity of binary coinage metal chalcogenides, which leads to properties intermediate between those of semiconducting and metallic phases. In addition, the size-dependency of the chemical, physical, and structural properties of substances on going from small molecules to bulk materials is of general interest. Approaches towards the synthesis and investigation of such clusters have included the study of colloidal nanoparticles with a narrow size distribution, as well as the formation and isolation of [a] ϩ49 (0)7247/82-6368 Andreas Eichhöfer (left) was born in Hünfeld, Germany, in 1964. He received his diploma in 1991, and subsequently graduated in 1993 in the group of Prof. D. Fenske at the university of Karlsruhe with a doctoral degree on metal-phosphorous cluster complexes. He then moved to the group of Prof. G. Fritz at the same institute to work on carbosilanes as precursor compounds for the fabrication of SiC fibers. After that he returned to his previous group and became a research scientist at the Institute of Nanotechnology at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in 1999, where he is currently investigating the syntheses and properties of semiconductor cluster compounds. Stefanie Dehnen (center) was born in Gelnhausen, Germany, in 1969. She obtained her diploma from the University of Karlsruhe in 1993 and her doctoral degree in 1996 under the supervision of Prof. D. Fenske on experimental and theoretical investigations of copper sulfide and copper selenide clusters. After a postdoctoral stay with Prof. R. Ahlrichs (1997) she returned to the inorganic chemistry department at the University of Karlsruhe where she is presently preparing her Habilitation. In 1997, she was awarded a Feodor-Lynen-Stipendium of the Alexander-von-Humboldt-Stiftung, and in 1998, she received a Margarete-von-Wrangell-Habilitations-Stipendium of the state of Baden-Württemberg. Her current research interests comprise the synthesis, structural elucidation and chemical reactivity of binary or ternary polyanions of main group elements. Dieter Fenske (right) was born in Dortmund, Germany, in 1942. He studied chemistry at the University of Münster where he also received his doctoral degree in 1973 with Prof. H. J. Becher. After the completion MICROREVIEWS: This feature introduces the readers to the authors' research through a concise overview of the selected topic. Reference to important work from others in the field is included.