Contribution of defects to the spin relaxation in copper nanowires

Abstract

The contributions to the spin relaxation in copper (Cu) nanowires are quantified by carefully analyzing measurements of both charge and spin transport in lateral spin valves as a function of temperature and thickness. The temperature dependence of the spin-flip scattering solely arises from the scattering with phonons, as in bulk Cu, whereas we identify grain boundaries as the main temperature-independent contribution of the defects in the nanowires. A puzzling maximum in the spin diffusion length of Cu at low temperatures is found, which can be explained by the presence of magnetic impurities. The results presented here suggest routes for improving spin transport in metallic nanostructures, otherwise limited by confinement effects.

10 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (4)

• Electrical Detection of Spin Transport in Lateral Ferromagnet-Semiconductor Devices
• Temperature dependence of the resistance of metallic nanowires (diameter $\ge$ 15 nm): Applicability of Bloch-Grüneisen theorem
• Spin transport in high quality suspended graphene devices
• Control of spin injection by direct current in lateral spin valves

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• Theory of Kondo suppression of spin polarization in nonlocal spin valves
• Anisotropic Spin Relaxation Induced by Surface Spin-Orbit Effects
• Spin dependent transport characterization in metallic lateral spin valves using 1D and 3D modeling
• Spin transport enhancement by controlling the Ag growth in lateral spin valves
• Accumulation of spin-polarized states of charge carriers and a spintronic battery