“…Grain boundary-induced martensitic transformations: Austenite (A)↔martensite (M) phase transformations play a central role in various industrially important materials, including shape memory alloys (SMAs) which can recover large strains and exhibit superelasticity [1][2][3][4]; dual phase steels where a proper mixture of ferrite and martensite yields suitable mechanical properties [5]; ferroic materials which are used for actuation and control [6]; various ceramics and minerals [6], etc. In materially uniform bodies, the heterogeneities, including the dislocations ( [7,8], Chapter 6 of [2]), accumulated plastic strains and shear bands [7,[10][11][12][13]15], crack tips [16], free surface [8,9], anti-phase boundaries [8], or any other regions within the materials with concentrated stresses [17,18], etc., are usually the preferred sites for nucleation of M in a single grain or polycrystalline samples of materials capable of undergoing martensitic transformations (MTs). The reduction in energies during MTs at other heterogeneous sites such as the matrix-precipitate interfaces [19], external surfaces of the samples [9,18,[20][21][22], and heterophase interfaces [23,24] also promotes the nucleation of M. On the other hand, point defects such as vacancies, interstitials, and ani-site defects may suppress the nucleation of M by significantly reducing the transformation temperatures [25,26].…”