I have experimented with mouse pads for many years. Mouse pads with a cloth surface are execrable: they have high levels of friction, making mouse use tiresome and slow. So I have tried lots of non-mouse surfaces. Brushed metal surfaces work well -- the underside of a MacBook works beautifully. Shiny metal surfaces, though, can cause skipping. I haven't tried this yet, but I suspect that you could get some aluminum sheet from a hardware store and sand it with fine sandpaper -- say, 600 -- and get a good surface; but this might add to the friction. I have also tried a piece of black shiny tile, and that worked pretty well, too.
However, my greatest success was with a thin sheet of transparent plastic. Now, I have tried all sorts of transparent stuff, and it never works -- but this stuff is only 0.020" inches thick, and I glued it to a foam rubber pad, and it works beautifully. The mouse glides across it easily; it has the lowest coefficient of static friction of anything. Yet another transparent plastic sheet just 0.040" thick refuses to work. I wanted to make a good mouse pad for a friend, but I just couldn't find that thin plastic sheeting anywhere. And even thinner stuff, like sheet protectors for paper documents, doesn't work, either. Maybe this stuff I'm using is magic.
I have been experimenting with polished corian but so far it doesn't seem to offer much advantage.