We investigate the spin dynamics and relaxation in remotely doped two dimensional electron systems where the dopants lead to random fluctuations of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Due to the resulting random-spin precession, the spin-relaxation time is limited by the strength and spatial scale of the random contribution to the spin-orbit coupling. We concentrate on the role of the randomness for two systems where the direction of the spin-orbit field does not depend on the electron momentum, the spin-field-effect transistor with balanced Rashba and Dresselhaus couplings and the (011) quantum well. Both of these systems are considered as promising for the spintronics applications, because the suppression of the Dyakonov-Perel’ mechanism there makes the realization of a spin-field-effect transistor in the diffusive regime possible. We demonstrate that the spin relaxation through the randomness of spin-orbit coupling imposes important physical limitations on the operational properties of these devices.

• Received 20 January 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.72.075318