The complexity and particularity of the extreme deep-sea environment poses a huge challenge to traditional analytical techniques. Microfluidic chips, with their advantages of miniaturization, integration, and anti-interference, provide potential innovative solutions for in-situ monitoring and biological analysis of deep-sea environments. At present, deep-sea environmental monitoring and biological analysis urgently need in-situ analytical sensing technologies that can adapt to extreme environments, are low-cost, highly efficient, and rapid and instant. In order to improve the performance of microfluidic chip-based sensing devices in deep-sea environments and biological analysis, our research focuses on the innovation of sensing mechanisms of functional materials that are adaptable to deep-sea environments, and explores the integrated construction of high-pressure and corrosion-resistant fluorescent sensing systems on microfluidic chip platforms. At the same time, we have also studied and designed a series of low-cost, high-stability, high-sensitivity, and high-selectivity in-situ rapid analysis methods and microfluidic chip devices suitable for environmental pollutants.
For example, we explore a kind of flexible three-dimensional Au@Cloth SERS substrate for SERS testing of deep-sea cold seep’s substances. As a highly sensitive detection method, the surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technology can nondestructively provide detailed information about the structure and function of biological molecules. This is important for revealing interpreting deep-sea organisms adapt to extreme environments physiological mechanisms, and exploring the diversity of deep-sea ecosystems. Here, we firstly designed a three-dimensional (3D) flexible SERS substrate to help deep-sea in-situ Raman systems achieve rapid SERS detection in mechanical focusing mode. Benefiting from the flexibility and 3D structure of the fabric fiber, the SERS substrates can overcome the disadvantage of rigid substrates being prone to damage, making it easier to quickly couple with deep-sea exploration devices. It makes mechanical operation on this device become simple, accurate and convenient. As known, the cost of deep-sea in situ exploration is high, and the opportunity is very precious. Therefore, we used the high-pressure simulator to investigate our flexible 3D SERS substrate by using 4-Mpy. Then the real cold seeps fluid samples (under 1100 m) obtained from our closed high fidelity biological sampling device were investigated in our system. We successfully obtained a large number of Raman characteristic peaks of amino acids and nucleic acid bases. This technique will open a new way for understanding the metabolic mechanisms of deep-sea microorganisms and developing new biological resources.

microfluidic chip technology