Thermodynamics of mechanical transduction of surface confined receptor/ligand reactions

Chemomechanics of surface stress is discussed in terms of interfacial thermodynamics. In the first section the paper shows how to quantitatively describe the chemical equilibrium of a receptor/ligand binding reaction confined at a solid-liquid interface and how the overall work of the reaction splits into chemical and surface work, that appears as a surface pressure. In the second section this thermodynamic model is applied to describe the experimental results of microcantilever bending induced by DNA hybridization occurring onto one of its faces