  Many proposed spintronics devices require mobile electrons at room
temperature with long spin lifetimes. One route to achieving this is to use
quantum wells with tunable spin-orbit (SO) parameters. Research has focused on
zinc-blende materials such as GaAs which do not have long spin lifetimes at
room temperature. We show that wurtzite (w) materials, which possess smaller SO
coupling due to being low-Z, are better suited for spintronics applications.
This leads to predictions of spin lifetimes in w-AlN exceeding 2 ms at helium
temperatures and, relevant to spintronic devices, spin lifetimes up to 0.5 $\mu
s$ at room temperature.
