| Spintronics, a frontier academic research area, is advancing rapidly in recent years. It has been chosen as one of the promising candidates for overcoming the obstacles in continuing the "Moore's Law" of the electronics industry. Spintronics employs both spin and charge degrees of freedom of electrons to reduce energy consumption and increase the flexibility of IC design. To achieve this, it is extremely important to understand the generation, transport, and detection of the spin polarized current (spin current).;In this work we use a mesoscopic metallic spintronic structure-nonlocal spin valve (NLSV)-for fundamental studies of spintronics. A nonlocal spin valve consists of two ferromagnetic electrodes (a spin injector and a spin detector) bridged by a non-magnetic spin channel. A thin aluminum oxide barrier (~ 2 - 3 nm) has been shown to effectively enhance the spin injection and detection polarizations. We have studied spin injection and detection in these nanoscale structures. Several topics will be discussed in this work.;In Chapter 4 we explore spin transport in NLSVs with Ag channels. Substantial spin signals are observed. The temperature dependence of the spin signals indicates long spin diffusion lengths and low surface spin-flip rate in the mesoscopic Ag channels. Chapter 5 will focus on the asymmetric spin absorption across the low-resistance AlOx barriers in NLSVs. This effect allows for a more simplified and efficient detection scheme for the spin accumulation. Then in Chapter 6 we report a large spin signal owing to a highly resistive break-junction. We have also developed a model to describe the spin-charge coupling effect which enables the large spin signal. In the end, Spin Hall Effect (SHE) is investigated in Chapter 7. A mesoscopic Pt film is utilized to inject a spin accumulation into a mesoscopic Cu channel via the SHE. The spin accumulation in Cu can be detected by the nonlocal method. The reciprocal effect -- the inverse Spin Hall Effect - (iSHE) is also observed in the same structure. A quantification method is described to estimate the spin Hall angle of Pt. |
