There is a considerable interest in the use of biological materials in electronic device applications. For example the purple membrane, a photoactive biological material, may have an application in artificial retinas. To fabricate devices such as artificial retinas from the purple membrane, a means of patterning the biological material on the substrate surface is needed. We have explored the use of self‐assembled monolayers to achieve the control of the adsorption of the purple membrane to a glass surface. By changing the terminal group of the self‐assembled monolayer, the affinity of the surface for the purple membrane is controlled. The adsorbed purple membrane films have been examined with x‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy. The x‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy data reveal that the purple membrane adsorbs to a clean glass surface in the amount 0.84 μg/cm2. Modifying the glass surface with a fluorocarbon‐based self‐assembled monolayer reduces the amount of purple membrane adsorbed by a factor of 9.3, to 0.09 μg/cm2. In the future, these results combined with one of the existing methods for patterning self‐assembled monolayers, will provide a means of spatially controlling the adsorption of the purple membrane on a substrate. Thus, this work represents an important first step in the patterning of purple membrane structures and devices on a surface.