Optical, electrical, and microstructural effects of Ar ion bombardment and Ar incorporation on thermally evaporated Ag and Al thin films were investigated. The results show that as the momentum supplied to the growing films by the bombarding Ar ions per arriving metal atom increases, refractive index at 632.8 nm increases and extinction coefficient decreases, lattice spacing expands, grain size decreases, electrical resistivity increases, and trapped Ar increases slightly. In Ag films, stress reverses from tensile to compressive; in AI films compressive stress increases. In both films, the change in optical constants can be explained by variation in void volume. The reversal of stress from tensile to compressive in Ag films requires a threshold level of momentum. The increase in electrical resistivity is related to the increase in the void fraction, decrease in the grain size, and increase in trapped Ar in both types of films. Many of these properties correlate well with the momentum transferred, suggesting that the momentum is an important physical parameter in describing the influence of ion beams on growing thin films and determining the characteristics of thin metal films prepared by ion-assisted deposition (IAD). With a low energy ion beam, the Ar concentration in IAD Ag films was negligible. When the bombarded film thickness was less than 5 nm, the electrical resistivity of IAD Ag films tended to decrease slightly from that of the non-IAD film. Using the Bruggeman effective medium theory, a formula for the void fraction at any given wavelength was derived. We investigated optical properties, stoichiometry, chemical bonding states, and structure of aluminum oxynitride thin films prepared by reactive ion-assisted deposition. Variations of optical constants and chemical bonding states are related to the stoichiometry. We found that our amorphous aluminum oxynitride film is not simply a mixture of aluminum oxide and nitride but a compound. A rugate filter using a step-index profile of aluminum oxynitride films was fabricated by nitrogen ion beam bombardment of a growing Al film with backfilled oxygen pressure as the sole variable. The effects of ultrasound-assisted deposition (UAD) on the optical properties of ZrO₂, Ta₂O₅, and MgF₂ films were investigated. UAD is likely to induce oxygen and fluoride deficiencies in oxide and fluoride films and increase the packing density of films.