having a continuous refractive index gradient between the air and the medium, which decreases reflection by effectively removing the air-lens interface. Practical anti-reflective films have been made by humans using this effect; this is a form of biomimicry. Canon uses the moth-eye technique in their Sub-Wavelength structure Coating, which significantly reduces lens flare. Such structures are also used in photonic devices, for example, moth-eye structures grown from tungsten oxide and iron oxide can be used as photoelectrodes for splitting water to produce hydrogen. The structure consists of tungsten oxide spheroids several hundred micrometers in diameter, coated with a few nanometers of iron oxide. Circular polarizer A circular polarizer laminated to a surface can be used to eliminate reflections. The polarizer transmits light with one chirality ("handedness") of circular polarization. Light reflected from the surface after the polarizer is transformed into the opposite "handedness". This light cannot pass back through the circular polarizer because its chirality has changed (e.g. from right circular polarized to left circularly polarized). A disadvantage of this method is that if the input light is unpolarized, the transmission through the assembly will be less than 50%. Theory There are two separate causes of optical effects due to coatings, often called thick-film and thin-film effects. Thick-film effects arise because of the difference in the index of refraction between the layers above and below the coating (or film); in the simplest case, these three layers are the air, the coating, and the glass. Thick-film coatings do not depend on how thick the coating is, so long as the coating is much thicker than a wavelength of light. Thin-film effects arise when the thickness of the coating is approximately the same as a quarter or a half a wavelength of light. In this case, the reflections of a steady source of light can be made to add destructively and hence reduce reflections by a separate mechanism. In addition to depending very much on the thickness of the film and the wavelength of light, thin-film coatings depend on the angle at which the light strikes the coated surface. Reflection Whenever a ray of light moves from one medium to another (for example, when light enters a sheet of glass after travelling through air), some portion of the light is reflected from the surface (known as the interface) between the two media. This can be observed when looking through a window, for