Interfaces, free or internal, greatly influence the physical properties and stability of materials
microstructures. Of particular interest are the processes that occur due to anisotropic
interfacial properties. In the case of grain boundaries (GBs) in metals, several experimental
observations revealed that an initially flat GB may facet into hill-and-valley structures with
well defined planes and corners/edges connecting them. Herein, we present a diffuse
interface model that is capable of accounting for strongly anisotropic GB properties and …