Nuclear Reaction Analysis (NRA)

When an energetic particle hits a nucleus in a target, depending on the mass of the particle and target and the energy of the particle, a variety of final products may form.  RBS is a special case in such reaction in which the reaction products are the same as those before reaction.  In cases where the incident beam energy exceeds a certain threshold value, other energetic particles appear in the spectrum.  The detection of these particles usually provide information which is not obtainable from RBS.  The NRA technique is very useful as a tool for the detection and profiling of light elements in heavy matrix.  In many cases such particle-particle NRA can be carried out in a RBS setup with only minor modifications.

Some examples of NRA