The confinement effect on the coercive field in relaxor ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene)[P(VDF-TrFE-CFE)] terpolymer nanowires with different diameters ranging from 30 to 170 nm was studied using piezoelectric force microscope. It was found that the coercive field increases significantly as the diameter of terpolymer nanowires decreases. The results can be explained by the conversion of molecule conformation from T(3)G to T-m>4 in the terpolymer nanowires, which is supported by Fourier transform infrared spectroscope. (c) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.