A serial of Cr-, B4C-monolayer and B4C/Cr multilayer films with variable layer thickness were deposited on BK-7 glass substrates using magnetron sputtering to study the stress evolution by detecting the changes of the substrate curvature with the optical interferometry technique. The stress of Cr-monolayer is tensile and decreases as its thickness increases, while the stress of B4C-monolayer is compressive and almost independent on its thickness. The residual stresses of B4C/Cr multilayer films are dependent not only on the stresses of B4C and Cr layers, but also on the interface stress between two neighboring layers. If the B4C layer thickness is kept constant, the stresses of B4C/Cr multilayer films change from compressive to tensile with the increasing of Cr layer thickness. Based on the theoretical analysis, the interface stress is mostly affected by the thickness of B4C layer and nearly negligible on the thickness of Cr layer. When the thicknesses of B4C and Cr layers are both 60 nm, the multilayer has very low residual stress, even with the period up to 17. (C) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.