chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the electronic, optical and physical properties of the nitride material system that have made it a heavily researched group of semiconductors. the need for heteroepitaxy and various commercially successful substrates will be discussed along with the motivation of this thesis. some general history will be provided as well as the challenges faced by these materials in commercialization. chapter 2 will focus on current and past growth techniques used for nitrides, outlining how epitaxy occurs in these systems with their respective benefits and faults. chapter 3 will give an overview on the characterization tools used throughout this research. an understanding of how these tools operate will assist in interpreting data correctly. combined with knowledge from chapter 2 it may also give insight on what needs to change about growth conditions to optimize growth. chapter 4 will present the growth results from various characterization tools discussed in chapter 3. conclusions about the data from each material system will be discussed. chapter 5 will focus on theoretical calculations for inn. initial results for inn show it to be the most promising material. a theoretical analysis of common impurities on the electronic band structure of inn will help in interpreting optical properties of the material. the central research contributions of the author in this thesis can be summarized as the development of iii-nitrides growth recipes for each material, characterization of the results, and the application of lcao theory to the inn system for common impurities found in the growth technique examined.