Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
The emission properties of a porous silicon layer placed in an optical microcavity is investigated by photoluminescence and time resolved photoluminescence measurements. The microcavity is formed by an all porous silicon Fabry-Perot filter made by two distributed Bragg reflectors separated by a λ or λ/2 porous silicon layer. Our main findings are that the spontaneous emission spectrum is drastically modified: the linewidth is narrowed, the time decay of the emission is shortened by a factor of about 2/3 at room temperature and the peak emission intensity is increased by a factor of more than 10. These facts are caused by the redistribution of the optical modes in the microcavity due to the presence of the optical resonator and to the variation of the dielectric environment.