Stainless steel, germanium, polypropylene, and perspex were coated with films derived from marine and freshwater samples and from solutions of model compounds (bovine serum albumin, lactoglobulin, myoglobin, and humic acids), Contact angles of water, formamide, and diiodomethane were measured on clean and conditioned substrata as well as on carbon- and nitrogen-limited cells of the Gram-negative bacterium SW8, The following physicochemical parameters were calculated by the Lifshitz-van der Waals acid-base approach : surface free energy and its three components (Lifshitz-van der Waals, electron-donor, and electron-acceptor), solid-water and bacterium-water interfacial tensions, and free energy of adhesion of bacterium to substratum, Although strongly affected by conditioning films, adhesion of carbon- and nitrogen-limited SW8 to clean and coated surfaces generally did not correlate with contact angle-derived physicochemical parameters, The only exception was attachment of carbon-limited SW8 to clean and coated germanium surfaces, where good correlations were obtained with the electron-donor component of surface free energy, the substratum-water interfacial tension, and the free energy of adhesion, suggesting that electron-donor components did play a major role in the adhesion of this phenotype to these surfaces.