A thin copper film is formed by CVD, by (a) forming a gas stream containing a copper halide, followed by introducing said gas stream into a CVD reaction chamber having a heated catalytic metal filament arranged herein, (b) introducing hydrogen gas into the CVD reaction chamber for activation of said hydrogen gas by the heated catalytic metal filament, and (c) carrying out the reaction between the copper halide contained in the gas stream introduced in step (a) and the hydrogen activated in step (b) near the surface of a substrate arranged within the CVD reaction chamber so as to deposit a thin copper film of copper on the substrate surface.

Metal surfaces, metal-oxide surfaces, metal-salt surfaces, silicon-comprising surfaces and/or high-molecular-weight aquoxide-comprising organic surfaces are coated. The coating is carried out with a reagent having a reactive group chosen from Si--H, Sn--H, and Ge--H. The reagent is applied in liquid, pasty, or solid form to the surface that is to be coated. Furthermore, the coating reaction requires the presence of an activator. A platinum metal in form of a compound or in metallic form is used as activator.

A substrate (35) is coated by using starting materials which are supplied in the form of clusters (28). The clusters are disintegrated into their molecular or atomic constituents, and the constituents are deposited on the substrate in the form of compact layers (34). In this manner it is attained that the layers have a defined structure and do not exhibit inclusions in the form of foreign molecules.