  The outstanding electrical and optical properties of graphene make it an
excellent alternative as a transparent electrode. Here we demonstrate the
application of graphene as collector material in internal photoemission (IPE)
spectroscopy; enabling the direct observation of both electron and hole
injections at a Si/Al2O3 interface and successfully overcoming the
long-standing difficulty of detecting holes injected from a semiconductor
emitter in IPE measurements. The observed electron and hole barrier heights are
3.5 eV and 4.1 eV, respectively. Thus the bandgap of Al2O3 can be further
deduced to be 6.5 eV, in close agreement with the valued obtained by vacuum
ultraviolet spectroscopic ellipsometry analysis. The detailed optical modeling
of a graphene/Al2O3/Si stack reveals that by using graphene in IPE measurements
the carrier injection from the emitter is significantly enhanced and the
contribution of carrier injection from the collector electrode is minimal. The
method can be readily extended to various IPE test structures for a complete
band alignment analysis and interface characterization.
