Abstract: Owing to many outstanding properties, aluminum nitride has attracted considerable attention. In this paper, AlN thin films have been grown on Si(100) substrates by UHV electron beam evaporation of Al followed by nitridation. XRD, FTIR and XPS are employed to characterize AlN films. Results indicated that the deposited aluminum films with thickness of 200nm has completely reacted with nitrogen after nitridation at 1000⁰C for 30 minutes and the AlN films with the preferred orientation of (002) are obtained.