Fabrication and characterization of lateral spin valves

Abstract

In the last few years, there has been a growing interest in Spintronics due to the pressing need for better device performance. In order to successfully incorporate spins into existing technology, issues such as spin injection, transport, control and manipulation have to be resolved. Most work done on spin valves focuses on the conventional vertical heterostructure. For this project, we have fabricated six-terminal lateral spin valve devices in order to study effects such as spin injection, spin accumulation and spin detection. These lateral structures offer additional degrees of freedom and allows for the integration of devices in the future. The fabrication process of these devices will be presented and the spin valve measurements obtained for different probe configurations at both room temperature and low temperature will also be discussed.