Due to the special optical, electronic properties, particular physical/chemical properties, thiolate protected gold nanoclusters (Au_m(SR)_n, in which m and n are the numbers of Au and SR) have potential applications in nanocatalysis, biomedicine and optical devices. Two breakthroughs in Au_m(SR)_n clusters are the crystal structure determinations of Au₁₀₂(SR)₅₄ and Au₂₅(SR)₁₈^- clusters, which uncover the new Au-S chemical bonding features as well as the new atomic packing structures in Au_m(SR)_n clusters. In this paper, major advances of the Au_m(SR)_n clusters in the experimentally determined crystal structures are generalized. This is followed by the introduction of the progresses in the experimentally synthesized Au_m(SR)_n clusters with mass spectroscopy and the progresses made by the density functional theory predictions. We combine our study subject to generalize superatom complex model, superatom-network model and super valence bond model which are used to interpret the stability and chemical bonding patterns of Au_m(SR)_n clusters. Moreover, we take several Au_m(SR)_n clusters as examples to introduce the applications of the three models. Finally, we give future outlook of the Au_m(SR)_n clusters.

Contents
1 Introduction
2 Experiments and theoretical predictions of Au_m(SR)_n clusters
2.1 Au_m(SR)_n clusters with single crystal structures
2.2 Au_m(SR)_n clusters with mass spectroscopy
2.3 Au_m(SR)_n clusters by DFT structural predictions
3 Theoretical models for Au_m(SR)_n clusters
3.1 Superatom complex (SAC) model
3.2 Superatom-network (SAN) model
3.3 Super valence bond (SVB) model
4 Conclusion and outlook