Machining the surface of mass standards is still of great importance. This paper details a comparative study of the roughness of two plane surfaces of a platinum–iridium alloy (90% of platinum and 10% of iridium). Using the BIPM processes, the surfaces were initially machined on a lathe using diamond tools; in addition, one of these was manually polished with a diamond paste.

Three techniques for surface characterization are used: shear-force microscopy (ShFM), optical roughness-meter and x-ray reflectometer. The first technique uses the shear-force interaction between the probe and the sample. The ShFM is part of a scanning near-field optical microscope that has the advantage of providing two images simultaneously, a topographical one and a near-field optical one. Only the topographic images will be presented in this paper; the results obtained in optical near-field will be the subject of another publication. To avoid any confusion, we will speak here of ShFM. The topographic images and their associated statistical and physical parameters, such as power spectral densities (PSDs), root-mean-square height, etc, are discussed in this paper. The PSDs of the surface are also determined experimentally from x-ray and visible light scattering measurements using angle-resolved scattering theory. This theory, which is well adapted for visible radiation, is extended to x-rays. The measurements made with the three instruments demonstrate that the two surfaces present a roughness of the same order of magnitude. However, the defects that contribute in a preponderant manner to their roughness spectrum do not belong to the same spatial bandwidth but depend on the polishing process.