Abstract:We report experimental study of spin transport in all metal nanowire spin valve structures. The nanowires have a diameter of 50 nm and consist of three layers -cobalt, copper and nickel. Based on the experimental observations, we determine that the primary spin relaxation mechanism in the paramagnet copper is the Elliott-Yafet mode associated with frequent interface roughness scattering. This mode is overwhelmingly dominant over all other modes, so that we are able to study the pure Elliott-Yafet mechanism. We deduce that the spin diffusion length associated with this mechanism is about 16 nm in our nanowires and is fairly temperature independent in the range 1-100 K. The corresponding spin relaxation time is about 100 femtoseconds. We also find that the spin relaxation is fairly independent of the electric field driving the current in the field range 0.75 -7.5 kV/cm.