In this letter we report the fabrication and optical‐electrical characterization of violet‐blue GaN homojunction light emitting diodes. Rapid thermal annealing at 1150 °C (for 30 s) was used to activate thep‐dopant species (Mg), which resulted inp‐type GaN whose photoluminescence response centered around 438 nm is much stronger than that obtained from material annealed in the growth chamber at lower temperatures (700–800 °C) and a longer time (20 min). ©1995 American Institute of Physics.