Nanostructured carbon thin films have been produced by deposition of supersonic cluster beams. The clusters are generated by a pulsed arc cluster ion source modified in order to achieve high fluxes and stability. Scanning electron microscopy, Raman, and optical spectroscopy show that the films are a low density network of nanometer-size particles. The nature of the films is essentially graphite-like with a large number of distorted bonds. The formation of structures based onsp3bondings is not observed. The use of cluster beam deposition for the synthesis of nanocrystalline thin films is discussed. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.