A method for mass fabrication of environmentally rugged monolithic diffractive optical elements (DOEs) is demonstrated. A one-step optical exposure, with a gray level mask, was used to produce analog resist profiles that were transferred into their substrates using chemically assisted ion beam etching in a single etching step. The described procedure allows mass fabrication of DOEs without the tedious multiple exposure and etching steps commonly used in multilevel DOE fabrication. To generate a multilevel DOE in an optical substrate, only a single exposure using a gray level mask and a single etching step are necessary. The fabrication method presented will reduce processing time and increase manufacturabilty, which will result in a general cost reduction per element.