Abstract
Experimentally observed trends in energy barriers at interfaces of different semiconductors (Si, Ge, GaAs, InP) with wide-gap oxide insulators are overviewed, revealing general features over a wide spectrum of studied materials. In particular, we found that the energy position of the O2p-derived oxide valence band remains nearly constant in a large number of oxides and, therefore, can be used as a reference level to evaluate the interface band alignment between oxides and semiconductors as well as between dissimilar oxides materials.