Deposition processes and devices for the fabrication of multilayer systems to better control the energy contribution at different stages of the deposition. This is achieved by depositing films by sputtering in a scheme providing for thermalized particles. Thermalized particles are obtained by choosing the working gas pressure and the distance between target and substrate to result in a mean free path of particles smaller than the distance between target and substrate or to result in a product of pressure and distance being larger than 2.0 cmPa.