Effect of contacts on spin lifetime measurements in graphene

Abstract

Injection, transmission, and detection of spins in a conducting channel are the basic ingredients of spintronic devices. Long spin lifetimes during transit are an important ingredient in realizing this technology. An attractive platform for this purpose is graphene, which has high mobilities and low spin-orbit coupling. Unfortunately, measured spin lifetimes are orders of magnitude smaller than theoretically expected. A source of spin loss is the resistance mismatch between the ferromagnetic electrodes and graphene. While this has been studied numerically, here we provide a closed form expression for Hanle spin precession which is the standard method of measuring spin lifetimes. This allows for a detailed characterization of the nonlocal spin valve device.