Structural defects and their impact on the performance, lifetime and reliability of electronic devices are of permanent interest for crystal growers and device manufacturers. This is especially true for epitaxial (Al, Ga)N/GaN based high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) structures on 4H-SiC (0 0 0 1) substrates. This work points out how micropipes, dislocations and grain boundaries present in a 4H-SiC (0 0 0 1) wafer and subsequently overgrown with an (Al, Ga)N-GaN-HEMT layer sequence show up in X-ray topographic images and two-dimensional XRD maps. Using X-ray topography in transmission geometry, micropipes and other structural defects are localized non-destructively below structured metallization layers with a spatial resolution of a few tens of micrometers. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.