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Abstract

Perovskite LaCoO3 is a subject of extensive and ongoing investigation due to the delicate competition between high-spin (HS) and low-spin (LS) states of Co3+. On the other hand, their indistinct free energy boundary poses a significant challenge to annihilate the magnetically/electrically inert LS Co3+ for yielding fully HS state. Here, electronic transformation from the conventional isovalent mixed HS/LS state ((Formula presented.)) into an unprecedented aliovalent fully HS state ((Formula presented.)) is demonstrated in monolayer LaCoO3 confined by 5d SrIrO3 slabs via atomically constructing SrIrO3/LaCoO3 superlattices. Excitingly, this emergent fully HS (Formula presented.) monolayer exhibits not only remarkable 2D ferromagnetism beyond the Mermin–Wagner restriction, but also larger magnetization (≈1.8µB/Co) and higher Curie temperature (above 100 K) than that of conventional (Formula presented.) thick film and any previously reported oxide-based monolayer ferromagnets. Furthermore, Ir/Co hybridization driven orbital reconstruction with polarization beyond standard crystal field expectations is observed, which is supported by DFT calculations. The findings not only expand the electronic phase domains of LCO into fully HS state, but also provide a fresh platform for investigating the 2D magnetic physics under strongly spin-orbit coupled regime and developing new 2D spintronic devices. © 2024 Wiley-VCH GmbH.