Sulfur-contained nonlinear reaction system is a significant branch of nonlinear chemistry, which can display complicated dynamics both in the homogeneous and reaction-diffusion medium. In particular, it also plays a critical role in the aspect of fronts interaction, labyrinthic pattern, self-replication pattern and systematical design of pattern formation in recent years. According to the number of oscillatory components, sulfur-contained oscillatory systems are mainly divided into two-component systems and three-component systems. The progress on sulfur-contained compound oscillators and pattern formation during the past three decades are introduced in the review. Furthermore, the potential application of the sulfur-contained oscillators and the involved reaction systems in biological field and responsive gel medium are systematically summarized. The difficulties existed in this active field are discussed in detail and the future directions are prospected.

Contents
1 Introduction
2 Sulfur-contained oscillators
2.1 Sulfur-contained oscillators with two components
2.2 Sulfur-contained oscillators with three components
2.3 Mechanism model for oscillators
3 Pattern formation in sulfur-contained systems
3.1 Patterns in the two-component systems
3.2 Patterns in three-component systems
3.3 Reaction diffusion model for sulfur-contained nonlinear chemical systems
4 pH oscillators of sulfur-contained coupled with biological molecular and soft matter
4.1 Coupling with biological molecular
4.2 Coupling with soft matter
5 Conclusions and outlook