Scanning a variety of precision optical and metrology equipment to find the flattest and smoothest material

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In the very first AFM video, I showed a "precision" gage block and everyone was surprised how rough it looked. So today we are scanning a variety of surfaces (gage block, mirrors, silicon, mica) to see how they compare in flattness and roughness. The flattest surface is considered "atomically flat", meaning the surface is a single, continuous layer of atoms in the crystal all at the same height. Wild!

I mention in the video, but it should be noted that flatness and smoothness/roughness are not quite the same. Flatness is a global property of how planar the surface is, while smoothness/roughness is a measure of smaller deviations from the average or median surface. I freely interchange the terms, partially on accident, but also because at the scan size it becomes a bit meaningless. At 10 microns flat and smooth are pretty similar concepts.

==== References ====
- Ostendorf, F., Schmitz, C., Hirth, S., Kühnle, A., Kolodziej, J. J., & Reichling, M. (2008). How flat is an air-cleaved mica surface? Nanotechnology, 19(30), 305705. doi:10.1088/0957-4484/19/30/305705 


==== Equipment and techniques ====
- nGauge AFM from ICSPI: https://www.icspicorp.com/
- Scans are post processed in Gwyddion (http://gwyddion.net/) and 3D images rendered in Blender
- Mica is from Ted Pella

==== Timeline ====
0:00 Intro
0:51 #6 - Gage Block
1:18 #5 - First surface mirror
1:52 #4 - λ/20 quartz mirror blank
3:05 #3 - Glass slide
4:13 Interlude - Flat vs Smooth/Rough
5:22 #2 - Silicon Wafer
6:41 #1 - Mica
9:03 Scan compilation comparison
9:39 Uses for mica