Industry and space technology have significant issues managing heat energy and controlling mass dispersion. The purpose of this study is to develop motion caused by boundary layer thickness sheets that are increasingly being used in various engineering fields (civil engineering, mechanical, aeronautical, maritime processes and constructions). The activation energy is a critical factor in chemical reactions due to the existence of many applications in gas-cooled reactors, nuclear thermal rockets and liquid-fluoride reactors. This study presents the numerical analysis of activation energy on three dimensional (3D) nanofluid (NFs) motion via Stretching Surface (SS) with nonlinear thermal radiation effect. This is in contrast to the conventional slip condition, convective condition applied at surface. The governing basic equations are translated into nonlinear ODEs by suitable similarity transformations. The relevant boundary value problem was explored for a numerical solution for applying the MATLAB based on Runge–Kutta–Fehlberg (RKF) scheme via shooting technique. The major outcomes of current work have more concentration ([Formula: see text]) and Mass Transfer Rate ([Formula: see text]) for various numerical values of Activation Energy ([Formula: see text]). The present solutions determine very good correlation with the previously studied ones in a special case as predicted in the tables.