Zinc selenide thin films have been deposited by an ion beam assisted evaporation system in order to investigate the influence of some deposition parameters, with particular interest on incident ions energy, on film microstructure by means of x-ray diffraction in conventional Bragg-Brentano reflection geometry. Two different ion kinds (Ar and Xe) have been employed during the deposition process in order to analyze the effect of the ion mass on the microstructure of the growing thin film. The correlation of the microstructure and some mechanical properties of films deposited with different parameters has been analyzed. Moreover, thin films composition has been analyzed by Rutherford backscattering technique and the correlation with the energy ions is reported.