Intrinsic 2D-XY ferromagnetism in a van der Waals monolayer

The physics and universality scaling of phase transitions in low-dimensional systems has historically been a topic of great interest. Recently, two-dimensional (2D) materials exhibiting intriguing long-range magnetic order have been in the spotlight. Although an out-of-plane anisotropy has been shown to stabilize 2D magnetic order, the demonstration of a 2D magnet with in-plane rotational symmetry has remained elusive. We constructed a nearly ideal easy-plane system, a single CrCl₃ monolayer on graphene/6H-SiC(0001), and observed robust ferromagnetic ordering with critical scaling characteristic of a 2D-XY system. These observations indicate the realization of a finite-size Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition in a large-area, quasi–free-standing van der Waals monolayer magnet with an XY universality class. This offers a material platform to host 2D superfluid spin transport and topological magnetic textures.