We have tested the concept of image charge screening as a new approach to enhance magnetic ordering temperatures and superexchange interactions in ultra thin films. Using a 3 monolayer NiO(100) film grown on Ag(100) and an identically thin film on MgO(100) as model systems, we observed that the Néel temperature of the NiO film on the highly polarizable metal substrate is 390 K while that of the film on the poorly polarizable insulator substrate is below 40 K. This demonstrates that screening by highly polarizable media may point to a practical way towards designing strongly correlated oxide nanostructures with greatly improved magnetic properties.PACS numbers: 75.30.Et, 78.70.Dm Transition metal oxides exhibit many spectacular magnetic and electrical properties including high temperature superconductivity and colossal magnetoresistance [1] making them particularly promising for nanoscience technology applications. An acute issue in the field of nanoscience, however, is the strong reduction of the relevant critical or ordering temperatures due to well known finite size effects [2,3,4,5]. If ways could be found to compensate for these reductions, one would immediately enlarge the materials basis for nano-technology. Current approaches to overcome these problems include the use of chemical doping, pressure, and strain [6,7,8,9,10,11].Here we propose to exploit image charge screening as a new method to compensate finite size phenomena and to enhance magnetic ordering temperatures well beyond the capability of conventional methods [6,7,8,9,10,11]. The basic idea is to bring the material in the close proximity of a strongly polarizable medium. The relevant exchange and superexchange interactions, and thus the related magnetic ordering temperatures, can then be substantially amplified by reducing the energies of the underlying virtual charge excitations as a result of the image-charge-like screening by the polarizable medium [12,13,14].To prove this concept we have chosen to measure the Néel temperature T N of a 3 monolayer (ML) NiO film epitaxially grown on a MgO(100) substrate and of an equally thin film on Ag(100). NiO on MgO and on Ag are ideal model systems for this study because of their simple crystal structure and well characterized growth properties. They have a rock-salt crystal structure with lattice constant a M gO = 4.212Å and a N iO = 4.176Å, respectively, corresponding to a lattice misfit of about 1%. This ensures a perfect layer-by-layer epitaxial growth of NiO(100) on MgO(100), with a NiO(100) film surface roughness of about 0.1Å [15]. Silver has a cubic fcc structure with a lattice constant a Ag = 4.086Å and a mismatch with respect to NiO of about 2%. When misfit dislocations are avoided by keeping the film thickness below the critical thickness for strain relaxation (about 30 ML for NiO/Ag [16]) as done in the present work, then NiO(100) films grow on Ag(100) in a nicely layered and coherent mode with a sharp interface. This was already demonstrated by Kado [17,18], but it has also been verified ...