Microfabricated Otto chip device for surface plasmon resonance-based optical sensing

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based sensors are usually designed using the Kretschmann prism coupling configuration in which an input beam couples with a surface plasmon through a thin metal film. This is generally preferred by sensor developers for building planar devices instead of the Otto prism coupling configuration, which, for efficient coupling, requires the metal surface to be maintained at a distance on the order of the wavelength from the input prism surface. In this paper, we report on the microfabrication and characterization of an Otto chip device, which is suitable for applications of the SPR effect in gas sensing and biosensing.