Enhancement and inhibition of spontaneous emission in room-temperature semiconductor microcavities with metallic mirrors

Summary form only given. We report the observation, at room temperature, of both enhancement and inhibition of the spontaneous emission due to the band-to-band transitions in InGaAs quantum wells, placed inside planar semiconductor microcavities with silver mirrors. In addition to the presentation of the experimental and theoretical results, we discuss the implications of these experiments on the physics of the electron-hole bimolecular recombination and on the possibility of exploiting the control of spontaneous emission in room temperature, electrically pumped, optoelectronic devices.