Non-polar a-plane GaN film with crystalline quality and anisotropy improvement is grown by use of high temperature AlN/AlGaN buffer, which is directly deposited on r-plane sapphire by pulse flows. Compared to the a-plane GaN grown on AIN buffer, X-ray rocking curve analysis reveals a remarkable reduction in the full width at half maximum, both on-axis and off-axis. Atomic force microscopy image exhibits a fully coalesced pit-free surface morphology with low root-mean-square roughness (similar to 1.5 nm). Photoluminescence is carried out on the a-plane GaN grown on r-plane sapphire. It is found that, at low temperature, the dominant emission at similar to 3.42 eV is composed of two separate peaks with different characteristics, which provide explanations for the controversial attributions of this peak in previous studies. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.