Introducing a small flow of hydrogen during the metal organic vapour phase epitaxy of InAlN will moderately reduce the indium incorporation into an epilayer while significantly reducing the volume of metallic indium on the surface as droplets, without significantly changing the nanoscale surface structure. Comparison with previous results suggests that this is a better way of removing surface indium while minimising the reduction of incorporated indium than increasing the temperature, and is similarly effective to change the TMI:TMA ratio. These results are consistent with the presence of an indium adlayer on the InAlN surface during growth facilitating indium incorporation. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.