“…Among the light elements, sodium is important for material, earth and environmental sciences, and cultural heritage as well, being a component of glass, minerals, sea spray aerosol particles and pigments. Very few data of interest for application of proton elastic backscattering analysis on sodium were found in the literature and in nuclear databases [1][2][3][4]; moreover, all data appear in graphical form in the original references and are anyway limited to 3.5 MeV proton energy. The 23 Na(p,p 0 c) 23 Na and 23 Na(p,a 0 c) 20 Ne reactions, yielding suitable prompt c-rays of 440, 1634 and 1636 keV, have been studied in the past in the proton energy range 1.0-4.5 MeV [5][6][7][8], but no absolute cross-section data were given, apart in the work from Mateus et al [8] which is anyway limited to 2.4 MeV proton energy.…”