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Shape memory alloys are a unique class of materials that can recover their original shape upon heating after a large deformation. Ti-Ni alloys with a large recovery strain are expensive, while low-cost conventional processed Fe-Mn-Si-based steels suffer from a low recovery strain (o3%). Here we show that the low recovery strain results from interactions between stress-induced martensite and a high density of annealing twin boundaries. Reducing the density of twin boundaries is thus a critical factor for obtaining a large recovery strain in these steels. By significantly suppressing the formation of twin boundaries, we attain a tensile recovery strain of 7.6% in an annealed cast polycrystalline Fe-20.2Mn-5.6Si-8.9Cr-5.0Ni steel (weight%). Further attractiveness of this material lies in its low-cost alloying components and simple synthesis-processing cycle consisting only of casting plus annealing. This enables these steels to be used at a large scale as structural materials with advanced functional properties.

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The evolution of α′ martensite with different thermo‐mechanical treatment and its effect on the shape memory effect were studied in an Fe‐14Mn‐5Si‐8Cr‐4Ni alloy. The α′ martensite was introduced by only 5% pre‐deformation, and its amount increased with increasing pre‐deformation up to 20%. The α′ martensite started to transform into austenite when the annealing temperature was 773 K. As the annealing temperature increased to 1 073 K, the α′ martensite almost transformed fully into austenite. The α′ martensite introduced by the thermo‐mechanical treatment could prevent collisions between different ε martensite bands during deformation. The intrusion of α′ martensite was another key reason that the stress‐induced ε martensite bands in Fe‐Mn‐Si based shape memory alloys formed in a domain‐specific manner in addition to that of uniformly distributed stacking faults after thermo‐mechanical treatment.

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