Comparison of material measures for areal surface topography measuring instrument calibration

The calibration of areal surface topography measuring instruments is a topic that is currently under discussion in international standard committees and a specification standard that defines the so-called "metrological characteristics" has been published. For the broad industrial adoption of the metrological characteristics for calibration, however, clear and easy-to-apply calibration guidelines are required. Thus, a single-sample material measure has been developed which allows the determination of the standardised metrological characteristics. In order to promote the adoption of the metrological characterstics calibration framework, measurements of the material measure with different instruments have been conducted and the results are presented. We report early work on the uncertainty of the comparison results and discuss systematic deviations between the various surface topography measuring instruments.