The growth facets and ferroelectric domains in the stoichiometric LiNbO3 crystals grown by flux (K2O) pulling method were studied in this present work. Through the chemical etching method, the morphology of ferroelectric domains was investigated; it was observed that the crystal consisted of two main domains with a boundary along the growth axis when it was grown along the X <1 1 (2) over bar 0> direction. According to the result of X-ray orientation experiments, the growth facets were determined to be <0 1 (1) over bar 2) faces, which to generate many small and spindly opposite domain areas along the direction of three ridges <0 (1) over bar 1 0>. On the other hand, three large and symmetric opposite domain areas were found to appear along the direction of three ridges <0 (1)over bar> 1 0>; these opposite domain areas are named as "regional single domain". Both the domain inversion fields and the dislocation density would decrease greatly when the Li/Nb ratio in crystal was increased. It is anticipated that the investigation of facets and ferroelectric domains will be useful to grow high-quality stoichiometric LiNbO3 crystals. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.