The planar epitaxial growth of semipolar (10 (1) over bar3) GaN on a Si(001) substrate was performed on a directionally sputtered AlN buffer layer. Three types of interlayers, i.e., single AlN, double AlN, and a stack of AlN/GaN layers were grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) to achieve high quality GaN films. The results for the stack of AlN/GaN layers provide highest crystal quality and optical properties for GaN. Comparing the top (Ga face) and bottom (N face) surfaces of grown semipolar (10 (1) over bar3) GaN confirms the defect density reduction that is due to the application of interlayers. Moreover, reduced inversion domain density on the bottom surface is attributed with the insertion of interlayers. Improving the quality of semipolar GaN on Si(001) substrates is expected to be useful for GaN/Si(001) integrated optoelectronics. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.