Patent ID: 7767269

Claim:
A method for coating a support comprising a first material with a coating layer comprising a second material, the method comprising successively and independently: in a material deposition step, depositing a coating layer comprising the second material having a given thickness on the support using an in situ source of plasma, and in a bombardment step, exposing the support and the deposited coating layer to an ion bombardment pulse at a predetermined energy density level for a predetermined duration, wherein the predetermined duration of the pulse and the predetermined energy density level of bombarded ions during the bombardment step are chosen such that the bombarded ions have sufficient energy to penetrate the coating layer and beyond the coating layer only to a region immediately adjacent to the coating layer and to transfer their energy to the coating layer and to the immediately adjacent region to create: an upper layer formed by cooling of an upper portion of the coating layer at a cooling speed of between about 10 9 and 10 10 degrees per second, said upper layer consisting of the second material and having an amorphous structure of finer granularity than the deposited coating layer before the bombardment step; and an intermediate layer resulting from fusion of a lower portion of the coating layer and the immediately adjacent region, wherein the intermediate layer includes an alloy including the first material and the second material.