You should probably read about IO lists. Here is a good blog post on the topic:
http://prog21.dadgum.com/70.html
I don’t know what you are doing, but most of the time you can skip combining binary files altogether. Of course, if you absolutely need it, you can still do it:
5> iolist_to_binary([<<"a">>, <<"b">>, <<"c">>]).
<<"abc">>
And it will work also if some of the elements are strings or characters:
9> iolist_to_binary([<<"a">>, <<"b">>, "c", $d]).
<<"abcd">>