Relative determination of W-values for alpha particles in tissue-equivalent and other gases

W (the average energy to form an ion pair) for 5.4 MeV 241Am alpha particles in a Rossi-type tissue-equivalent (TE) gas, argon and methane was determined to an accuracy better than 0.2% using a new automated data handling system. A vibrating reed electrometer and current digitiser were used to measure the current produced by completely stopping the alpha particles in a large cylindrical ionisation chamber. A multichannel analyser, operating in a slow multiscaler mode, was used to store pulses from the current digitiser. The dwell time, of the order of 60 min per channel, was selected with an external timer gate. Current measurements were made at reduced pressures (200 Torr) to reduce ion recombination. The average current, over many repeated measurements, was compared to the current produced in nitrogen and its previously published W-value of 36.39+/-0.04 eV per ion pair. The resulting W-values were, in eV per ion pair, 26.29+/-0.05 for argon, 29.08+/-0.03 for methane and 30.72+/-0.04 for TE gas, which had an analysed composition of 64.6% methane, 32.4% CO2 and 2.7% nitrogen. Although the methane and argon values agree within 0.1% with previously published values, the value for TE is 1.2% lower than the single previously reported value.