By successive oxygen treatments of graphene non-local spin-valve devices we achieve a gradual increase of the contact resistance area products (R_cA) of Co/MgO spin injection and detection electrodes and a transition from linear to non-linear characteristics in the respective differential dV-dI-curves. With this manipulation of the contacts both spin lifetime and amplitude of the spin signal can significantly be increased by a factor of seven in the same device. This demonstrates that

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... duced spin dephasing is the bottleneck for spin transport in graphene devices with small R_cA values. With increasing R_cA values, we furthermore observe the appearance of a second charge neutrality point (CNP) in gate dependent resistance measurements. Simultaneously, we observe a decrease of the gate voltage separation between the two CNPs. The strong enhancement of the spin transport properties as well as the changes in charge transport are explained by a gradual suppression of a Co/graphene interaction by improving the oxide barrier during oxygen treatment.