The groups with the strongest binding in Table are the cation (TMA) and anion (acetate) belonging to the zwitterionic surfactant. All the polar motifs prefer to adsorb on top of the deposit rather than wrapping around the edge, except the carboxylate anion which does not show a preferential binding site -the E ads difference between both sites is lower than the thermal energy (∼ 0.7 kcal mol -1 ) at 350 K. The phenyl and the alcohol groups in the zwitterionic surfactant are not favoured with respect to the base solvent, and so their contributions are left out in the following discussion.