Spin injection, propagation and detection in lateral Spintronics devices

Spintronics; composed from spins, electrons and electronics; deals with systems which take advantage of both the spin and charge of the electron. Spintronics based devices are promising candidates for novel electronics, but also exhibit intriguing physical phenomena. I will (partially) review advances in this field, and focus on lateral spin valves. These are useful ferromagnetic/non-magnetic devices that can decouple a pure spin current from an electrical current by using a non-local geometry. We have used lateral spin valves to study spin injection, propagation and detection in metallic devices, as function of material choice and geometry.