We deposit ternary WCxNy thin films on Si (1 0 0) substrates at 500 degrees C using direct current (DC) reactive magnetron sputtering in a mixture of CH4/N-2/Ar discharge, and explore the effects of substrate bias (V-b) on the intrinsic stress, preferred orientation and phase transition for the obtained films by virtue of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and selective area electron diffraction (SAED). We find that with increasing the absolute value of V-b up to 200 V the carbon (x) and nitrogen (y) atom concentrations of WCxNy films keep almost constant with the values of 0.75 and 0.25, respectively. The XPS and SAED results, combined with the density-functional theory (DFT) calculations on the electronic structure of WC0.75N0.25, show our obtained WCxNy films are single-phase of carbonitrides. Furthermore, we find that the compressive stress sharply increases with increasing the absolute value of V-b, which leads to a pronounced change in the preferred orientation and phase structure for the film, in which a phase transition from cubic beta-WCxNy to hexagonal alpha-WCxNy occurs as V-b is in the range of -40 to -120 V. In order to reveal the relationship between the stress and phase transition as well as preferred orientation, the DFT calculations are used to obtain the elastic constants for beta-WCxNy and alpha-WCxNy. The calculated results show that the preferred orientation is dependent on the competition between strain energy and surface energy, and the phase transition can be attributed to a decrease in the strain energy. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.