The Role of Charged Particle Activation for Materials Analysis

In this discussion, we first try to define the cases where analysis by irradiation with charged particles requires the use of relatively high energy beams, e.g from a cyclotron or from a Tandem Van de Graaff. It seems that the most important method using high energy charged particles, is activation analysis. We describe the important features of this method, we compare them with those of other methods, and we try to show the important role it plays in two important fields : -The analysis of traces -The elaboration of reference materials.