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Giant enhancement of spin accumulation and long-distance spin precession in metallic lateral spin valves

Nature Materials volume 10, pages 527–531 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

The non-local spin injection in lateral spin valves is strongly expected to be an effective method to generate a pure spin current for potential spintronic application. However, the spin-valve voltage, which determines the magnitude of the spin current flowing into an additional ferromagnetic wire, is typically of the order of 1 μV. Here we show that lateral spin valves with low-resistivity NiFe/MgO/Ag junctions enable efficient spin injection with high applied current density, which leads to the spin-valve voltage increasing 100-fold. Hanle effect measurements demonstrate a long-distance collective 2π spin precession along a 6-μm-long Ag wire. These results suggest a route to faster and manipulable spin transport for the development of pure spin-current-based memory, logic and sensing devices.

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Figure 1: Sample structure and representative non-local spin-valve signal.
Figure 2: Dependence of non-local spin-valve signal on interface resistance and injector–detector separation.
Figure 3: Spin-precession measurements by using the Hanle effect.
Figure 4: Spin-valve signal and voltage for various NiFe/MgO/Ag junctions.

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Acknowledgements

This work is partly supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research in Priority Area ‘Creation and control of spin current’ (No 19048013) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Science Institute, RIKEN, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako 351-0198, Japan

    Yasuhiro Fukuma, Le Wang & YoshiChika Otani

  2. Department of Material Physics and Chemistry, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China

    Le Wang & YoshiChika Otani

  3. Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa 277-858, Japan

    Hiroshi Idzuchi & YoshiChika Otani

  4. Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan

    Saburo Takahashi

  5. CREST, Japan Science and Technology, Tokyo 102-0075, Japan

    Saburo Takahashi & Sadamichi Maekawa

  6. Advanced Science Research Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Tokai 319-1195, Japan

    Sadamichi Maekawa

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  1. Yasuhiro Fukuma
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  2. Le Wang
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  3. Hiroshi Idzuchi
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  4. Saburo Takahashi
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  5. Sadamichi Maekawa
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  6. YoshiChika Otani
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Contributions

Y.F., L.W. and H.I. designed the experiments, fabricated devices and carried out analysis. S.T. and S.M. developed the theoretical analysis. Y.O. planned and supervised the project. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yasuhiro Fukuma or YoshiChika Otani.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Fukuma, Y., Wang, L., Idzuchi, H. et al. Giant enhancement of spin accumulation and long-distance spin precession in metallic lateral spin valves. Nature Mater 10, 527–531 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3046

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