While RBS is generally used to measure the bulk composition and structure of a sample, it is possible to obtain some information about the structure and composition of the sample surface. When the signal is channeled to remove the bulk signal, careful manipulation of the incident and detection angles can be used to determine the relative positions of the first few layers of atoms, taking advantage of blocking effects.
The surface structure of a sample can be changed from the ideal in a number of ways.  The first layer of atoms can change its distance from subsequent layers (relaxation); it can assume a different two-dimensional structure than the bulk (reconstruction); or another material can be adsorbed onto the surface.  Each of these cases can be detected by RBS. For example, surface reconstruction can be detected by aligning the beam in such a way that channeling should occur, so that only a surface peak of known intensity should be detected.  A higher-than-usual intensity or a wider peak will indicate that the first layers of atoms are failing to block the layers beneath, i.e. that the surface has been reconstructed.  Relaxations can be detected by a similar procedure with the sample tilted so the ion beam is incident at an angle selected so that first-layer atoms should block backscattering at a diagonal; that is, from atoms which are below and displaced from the blocking atom.  A higher-than-expected backscattered yield will indicate that the first layer has been displaced relative to the second layer, or relaxed. Adsorbate materials will be detected by their different composition, changing the position of the surface peak relative to the expected position.
RBS has also been used to measure processes which affect the surface differently from the bulk by analyzing changes in the channeled surface peak.  A well-known example of this is the RBS analysis of the premelting of lead surfaces by Frenken, Maree and van der Veen.  In an RBS measurement of the Pb(110) surface, a well-defined surface peak which is stable at low temperatures was found to become wider and more intense as temperature increase past two-thirds of the bulk melting temperature.  The peak reached the bulk height and width as temperature reached the melting temperature.  This increase in the disorder of the surface, making deeper atoms visible to the incident beam, was interpreted as pre-melting of the surface, and computer simulations of the RBS process produced similar results when compared with theoretical pre-melting predictions.
RBS has also been combined with nuclear microscopy, in which a focused ion beam is scanned across a surface in a manner similar to a scanning electron microscope.  The energetic analysis of backscattered signals in this kind of application provides compositional information about the surface, while the microprobe itself can be used to examine features such as periodic surface structures.