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AlN epilayers were grown on magnetron-sputtered (MS) (11-22) AlN buffers on m -plane sapphire substrates at 1450 °C via hydride vapour phase epitaxy (HVPE). The MS buffers were annealed at high temperatures of 1400-1600 °C. All the samples were characterised using X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscope and Raman spectrometry. The crystal quality of epilayers regrown by HVPE was improved significantly compared to that of the MS counterpart. With an increasing annealing temperature, the crystal quality of both MS buffers and AlN epilayers measured along [11-23] and [1-100] improved first and then decreased, maybe due to the decomposition of MS buffers, while the corresponding anisotropy along the two directions decreased first and then increased. The optimum quality of the AlN epilayer was obtained at the annealing temperature of around 1500 °C. In addition, it was found that the anisotropy for the epilayers decreased significantly compared to that of annealed MS buffers when the annealing temperature was below 1500 °C.