Highly Oriented Pyrolytic Graphite

HOPG, is a relatively new form of high purity carbon and provides microscopists with a renewable and smooth surface.    Unlike mica, HOPG is completely non-polar, and for samples where elemental analysis will also be done, it provides a background with only carbon in the elemental signature.    The extreme smoothness of HOPG gives results in a featureless background, except at atomic levels of resolution.