Microscopic origins for stabilizing room-temperature ferromagnetism in ultrathin manganite layers

La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 is a conducting ferromagnet at room temperature. Combined with thin SrTiO3 layers, the resulting heterostructures could be used as highly spin-polarized magnetic-tunnel-junction memories. However, when shrunk to dimensions below an apparent critical thickness, the structures become insulating and ferromagnetic ordering is suppressed. Interface spin and charge modulations are thought to create an interfacial dead layer, thus fundamentally limiting the use of this material in atomic-scale devices. The thickness of this dead layer, and whether it is intrinsic, is still controversial. Here we use atomic-resolution electron spectroscopy to demonstrate that the degradation of the magnetic and transport properties of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3/SrTiO3 multilayers correlates with atomic intermixing at the interfaces, and the presence of extended two-dimensional cation defects in the La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 layers (in contrast to three-dimensional precipitates in thick films). When these extrinsic defects are eliminated, metallic ferromagnetism at room temperature can be stabilized in five-unit-cell-thick manganite layers in superlattices, placing the upper limit for any intrinsic dead layer at two unit cells per interface.