（8） Deep-Sea-Inspired Chemistry: Materials Innovation from Deep-Sea Extreme Environment

Abstract

The deep sea represents an extreme environment that differs fundamentally from the Earth’s surface in hydrostatic pressure, temperature, and light conditions. Deep-sea-inspired chemistry is an emerging scientific framework that seeks to extract guiding principles from deep-sea natural history and apply them to the development of new paradigms in materials science and process engineering, thereby promoting a transition in ocean utilization from a resource-based to a knowledge-based economy. In this article, we review several research directions developed under this concept: baroplastics, a class of polymeric materials whose order–disorder transitions can be reversibly modulated by pressure; MAGIQ, a nanoemulsification process inspired by the dynamic high-temperature conditions of deep-sea hydrothermal vents, together with its extension to the continuous production of emulsifying polysaccharides; and SPOT, a highly sensitive visual enzymatic assay derived from the survival strategies of deep-sea microorganisms. These examples collectively demonstrate that fundamental principles of the deep-sea environment can be productively translated into new strategies for materials design and reaction engineering.