  Combinatorial spread libraries offer a unique approach to explore evolution
of materials properties over the broad concentration, temperature, and growth
parameter spaces. However, the traditional limitation of this approach is the
requirement for the read-out of functional properties across the library. Here
we demonstrate the application of automated Piezoresponse Force Microscopy
(PFM) for the exploration of the physics in the SmxBi1-xFeO3 system with the
ferroelectric-antiferroelectric morphotropic phase boundary. This approach
relies on the synergy of the quantitative nature of PFM and the implementation
of automated experiments that allows PFM-based gird sampling over macroscopic
samples. The concentration dependence of pertinent ferroelectric parameters has
been determined and used to develop the mathematical framework based on
Ginzburg-Landau theory describing the evolution of these properties across the
concentration space. We pose that combination of automated scanning probe
microscope and combinatorial spread library approach will emerge as an
efficient research paradigm to close the characterization gap in the
high-throughput materials discovery. We make the data sets open to the
community and hope that will stimulate other efforts to interpret and
understand the physics of these systems.
