TY - JOUR A1 - Stajanca, Pavol A1 - Cetinkaya, O. A1 - Schukar, Marcus A1 - Mergo, P. A1 - Webb, D. J. A1 - Krebber, Katerina T1 - Molecular alignment relaxation in polymer optical fibers for sensing applications JF - Optical fiber technology N2 - A systematic study of annealing behavior of drawn PMMA fibers was performed. Annealing Dynamics were investigated under different environmental conditions by fiber longitudinal shrinkage monitoring. The shrinkage process was found to follow a stretched exponential decay function revealing the heterogeneous nature of the underlying molecular dynamics. The complex dependence of the fiber shrinkage on initial degree of molecular alignment in the fiber, annealing time and temperature was investigated and interpreted. Moreover, humidity was shown to have a profound effect on the annealing process, which was not recognized previously. Annealing was also shown to have considerable effect on the fiber mechanical properties associated with the relaxation of molecular alignment in the fiber. The consequences of fiber annealing for the climatic stability of certain polymer optical fiber-based sensors are discussed, emphasizing the importance of fiber controlled pre-annealing with respect to the foreseeable operating conditions. KW - Polymer optical fibers KW - Optical fiber sensor climatic stability KW - Thermal annealing KW - Molecular alignment relaxation KW - Humidity induced annealing PY - 2016 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yofte.2015.12.006 SN - 1068-5200 VL - 28 SP - 11 EP - 17 PB - Academic Press CY - Orlando AN - OPUS4-35288 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -