This work was done under the aegis of the State budget programs 0113U000137c ‘Physical principles of plasma technologies for complex treatment of multicomponent materials and coatings’, 0115 U000682 ‘The development of material science basis of a structural engineering, vacuum plasma superhard coatings in order to reach the required func-tional properties’ and in collaboration with the Institute ‘P’-Prime, University Poitiers France, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba Ibasaki, Japan, and NBMC, Adam Mickiewicz University, Po-land. The authors are grateful to co-authors of the original work (the basis of which composes this review), namely, O. V. Bondar, B. A. Pos-tolnyi, V. A. Stolbovoy, V. Yu. Novikov, S. V. Lytovchenko, O. V. Sobol’, U. S. Nyemchenko, I. N. Toryanik, D. A. Kolesnikov and others.