Carbon nitride may have many different uses as wear and corrosion resistant coatings, electrical insulators, and optical coatings. We report the results of using sputtering and negative carbon ion sources to prepare thin films of carbon nitride. In this work, we compare the tribological properties of the carbon nitride films that were prepared by two separate ion-beam assisted techniques. The first approach used an ONYX-2 magnetron to sputter deposit carbon in a nitrogen atmosphere with and without simultaneous bombardment of the growing film with low-energy (similar to 50-200 eV) nitrogen ions. The second method utilized a beam of negatively charged carbon ions of 1-5 mA/cm(2) current density impinging the substrate at the same time with a positive nitrogen ion beam produced by an "Ion Tech" Kaufman source. We were able to produce microscopically smooth, continuous coatings that are harder than silicon. These films possess wear rates lower than 5 X 10(-7) mm(3)/Nm and friction coefficients in the range of 0.16-0.6. These data compare favorably with the results obtained by other authors. Raman spectroscopy revealed that the magnetron sputtered films are more structurally disordered than those formed with the negative carbon ion gun. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy showed the presence of C drop N stretching mode in both types of films.