Abstract

Lateral spin valves are attractive as potential devices and utilise charge currents to generate spin currents. The heat generated by the charge currents is understood to originate from the Joule and Peltier effects at the injector but little is known about what happens to this heat as a function of temperature and separation between the injector and detector. Using scanning thermal microscopy we map the spatial distribution of temperatures as heat diffuses through a lateral spin valve. A simple heat diffusion model is verified with the scanning microscopy data and is developed to understand the thermal properties down to 2K. In this way, long-standing questions about the thermal voltages measured at the detector and in particular, the temperature dependence of the baseline resistance are answered.