Imaging of lateral spin valves with soft X-ray microscopy

Abstract

We investigated Co/Cu lateral spin valves by means of high-resolution transmission soft x-ray microscopy with magnetic contrast that utilizes x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD). No magnetic XMCD contrast was observed at the Cu L${}_3$ absorption edge, which should directly image the spin accumulation in Cu. Although electrical transport measurements in a non-local geometry clearly detected the spin accumulation in Cu, which remained unchanged during illumination with circular polarized x-rays at the Co and Cu L${}_3$ absorption edges.

References in corpus (4)

• Room Temperature Reversible Spin Hall Effect
• Spin-Diffusion Lengths in Metals and Alloys, and Spin-Flipping at Metal/Metal Interfaces: an Experimentalist's Critical Review
• Control of spin injection by direct current in lateral spin valves
• Direct demonstration of decoupling of spin and charge currents in nanostructures

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Direct detection of pure spin-current by x-ray pump-probe measurements
• X-Ray Detection of Transient Magnetic Moments Induced by a Spin Current in Cu
• X-ray imaging of spin currents and magnetisation dynamics at the nanoscale
• X-ray spectroscopy of current-induced spin-orbit torques and spin accumulation in Pt/3d transition metal bilayers