Number 80 (Story #2), May 19, 1992 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein BINARY OPTICS is a new technology that has already led to thinner, lighter lenses and optical devices that were once impossible to make. The method for manufacturing binary optics devices explains the technology's name: workers use the same equipment that fabricates digital circuits to etch patterns onto optical materials. Whereas conventional lenses, using the principle of refraction, require several millimeters of material, binary optics, employing diffractive effects accomplished in a space only a fraction of a wavelength in size, can facilitate devices with surface dimensions as small as half a micron and depths as shallow as a nanometer. The etched patterns, usually made up of microscopic staircases, are designed to break up the incident light into individual wavefronts, which interfere in such a way as to create a new wavefront that travels in a desired direction. Virtually any optical transformation can be achieved with binary optics: for example, workers at Hughes converted circular patterns into straight lines, a geometry that is much easier for pattern-recognition machines to decipher. The production method offers another advantage: optical components can now be etched directly onto integrated circuits. This makes it feasible to produce systems that mimic biological vision, with light-gathering devices on top of individual processing elements. (Scientific American, May 1992.)