Nanoscale insight into the domain structures of high Curie point Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-PbTiO3 single crystal

•(1-x)Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-xPbTiO3 (PINT, PINTx) was studied by PFM.•Strip-like ferroelectric domain with x from 0.28 to 0.42 was observed.•The in situ electric-field induced domain evolution was studied.•Domain with good temperature stability from 30 °C to above 200 °C was observed.

Recently high-Curie point relaxor ferroelectric single crystals represented by the binary (1-x)Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-xPbTiO3 (PINT, PINTx) and ternary Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PIN-PT) attracted much attention. In order to given an insight into the domain structures for these high Curie temperature Tc single crystals, in this work, PINT single crystal, grown by a modified Bridgeman method, was studied by piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). Results indicated that the PINTx single crystal exhibited strip-like long-range-order ferroelectric domain structures at room temperature with x across the morphotropic phase boundary ranging from 0.28 to 0.42. The electric-field induced domain evolution was performed to give an insight into the local poling behavior for rhombohedral compositions PINT0.28 and PINT0.34 (with giant piezoelectric strain response). The temperature-dependent PFM results indicated that the PINT single crystal exhibited good temperature stability in nanoscale and clear domain patterns could still be observed above the Tc.