Abstract: The invention relates to fluorine-doped coatings which include a diamond-like composition containing carbon, silicon, oxygen, hydrogen, and fluorine on various substrates. Preferred substrates include flexible substrates, precision-edged substrates, and electrosurgical instruments. The present invention also relates to a method of making a substrate coated with a fluorine-doped diamond-like coating which includes positioning the substrate in a vacuum coating chamber and depositing a diamond-like composition containing carbon, silicon, oxygen, hydrogen, and fluorine onto the substrate by co-deposition of clusterless particle beams comprised of ions, atoms, or radicals of the carbon, silicon, oxygen, hydrogen, and fluorine, the mean free path of each particle species being in excess of the distance between its source and the growing particle coating surface of the substrate.