Strongly Coupled Magnetic and Electronic Transitions in Multivalent Strontium Cobaltites

The topotactic phase transition in SrCoO _x (x = 2.5-3.0) makes it possible to reversibly transit between the two distinct phases, i.e. the brownmillerite SrCoO_2.5 that is a room-temperature antiferromagnetic insulator (AFM-I) and the perovskite SrCoO₃ that is a ferromagnetic metal (FM-M), owing to their multiple valence states. For the intermediate x values, the two distinct phases are expected to strongly compete with each other. With oxidation of SrCoO_2.5, however, it has been conjectured that the magnetic transition is decoupled to the electronic phase transition, i.e., the AFM-to-FM transition occurs before the insulator-to-metal transition (IMT), which is still controversial. Here, we bridge the gap between the two-phase transitions by density-functional theory calculations combined with optical spectroscopy. We confirm that the IMT actually occurs concomitantly with the FM transition near the oxygen content x = 2.75. Strong charge-spin coupling drives the concurrent IMT and AFM-to-FM transition, which fosters the near room-T magnetic transition characteristic. Ultimately, our study demonstrates that SrCoO _x is an intriguingly rare candidate for inducing coupled magnetic and electronic transition via fast and reversible redox reactions.