A new coating system which generates a magnetically confined plasma via microwave heating in an electron cyclotron resonance zone has shown much promise in several coating applications. The system is used to produce high density plasmas of gas and/or metals ions. With metal plasmas, many of the deposited coatings are made exclusively from singly ionized, ion depositions. For many metals the system produces fairly high deposition rates (greater than 1 μ a min for many metals) using a sputter plate as the source of neutrals to be ionized. The use of evaporative neutral sources should produce higher densities and deposition rates. The operation of this system and its use in several interesting coating applications is discussed. These applications have included the generation of multilayered coatings for x‐ray optics, the effect of surface bias on metal ion depositions, low voltage (50 to 60 eV)/hi current (30 mA/cm2) sputter etching, and depositions from metal‐reactive gas plasmas.