LiAlO2 is an interesting substrate for growing GaN semiconductor material since the lattice mismatch between LiAlO2, and GaN is as small as 1.7%. LiAlO2 substrate are easily fabricated due to its low hardness, and chemical etchability. A unique feature of GaN grown on a (1 0 0) LiAlO2 substrate is that it grows along the M-plane (1 0 1 0), which is non-polar. In this orientation, the spontaneous polarization can be eliminated. This paper describes the growth of (10 0) LiAlO2 single crystals using the Czochralski method. Two crystal boules are presented and compared. The crystal's structure was identified as the gamma phase by X-ray diffraction scan. A method for polishing a crystal to obtain a smooth scratch-free LiAlO2 single crystal substrate surface with a room mean square roughness below 1.0 nm is proposed. The surface morphology of the polished LiAlO2 surface was evaluated by atomic force microscope. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.