The fabrication of optically smooth thin Sn films by vacuum or electrodeposition techniques is usually challenging. Little has been published on how to address this challenge mainly because very few applications require such smooth Sn surfaces. The excitation of surface plasmon polaritons on Sn surfaces by prism-based methods represents a case that requires very smooth surfaces and has motivated this work. It is shown that the deposition rate and the substrate temperature of a vacuum evaporation method can be optimized to obtain very smooth Sn films and this is supported by direct imaging evidence from atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.