The physical effects of bombarding a surface with inert gas ions with an energy of up to 2 × 10 −16 J were analyzed for application to deposition and etching of metal (tungsten, molybdenum, chromium) nitride (TiN, Si 3N 4) and oxide (SiO 2, Cr 2O 3) coating and multilayer thin films. The layers were formed and etched using glow discharge and ion beam sputtering at a temperature of 1600 K. The major effects of ions on the surface are anisotropic and selective sputtering, defect shaping and ion introduction. Metal surfaces were obtained with crystallites cut basically formed by [110] and [100] planes under conditions of crystallographic anisotrophy of sputtering of the growing layer material. It was found that the effects of the formation of volumetric defects in metal coatings may occur within tens of micrometers from the surface using a temperature above 0.3 T m (where T m is the melting temperature) and an ion flux density of more than 10 ions m −2 s −1. Registration of an integral chaiacteristic signal of emitted electrons with a current of 30 μA made it possible to obtain information on the dynamic state of the surface subjected to ion etching of its multilayer film.