Thermally grown, native silicon oxide (SiO2) has an ultimate quality - minimum number of defects, good stability, good mobility for free carriers (when inversion layer is formed), etc.
It is the invention of thermally grown oxidation, making a high-quality gate oxide dielectric, than made the MOSFET a winner.
This was done by Mohamed Atalla at Bell Labs.
In hafnium based oxide, there is a think SiO2 intermediate layer, on the surface of Si, to keep defects low and quality high.
No other semiconductor material has such a nice native, high-quality, stable oxide, that's why silicon is still in use, in spite of its relatively poor carrier mobility.