In the history of condensed matter physics, very few classes of materials have matched semiconductors and superconductors in the fundamental research interest and activities as well as the technological breakthroughs they have already generated and still promise. Hybrid materials of these two basic classes could provide an entirely new regime of fundamental and application-oriented explorations, in terms of offering new material platforms for studies of unconventional, high-temperature superconductivity and for development of quantum technologies that can exploit the controllability of semiconductor structures and the macroscopic quantum states of superconductors. So far, all hybrid superconductor-semiconductor devices produced have relied only on low-temperature superconductors, whose operations require extreme cooling. Devices that combine high-temperature superconductors with semiconductors would enable much higher working temperatures and larger energy scales, making their applications much more practical. In this paper, we have realized hybrid tunnel diodes composed of a high-temperature superconductor (${\mathrm{Bi}}_2{\mathrm{Sr}}_2{\mathrm{CaCu}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_{8+\delta }$) and a second material that is either bulk semiconductor GaAs, or semiconductor GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells, graphite, or a topological insulator (${\mathrm{Bi}}_2{\mathrm{Te}}_3$).

The realizations of these different devices are made possible by a new mechanical-bonding technique that produces a mechanically robust and electronically functional interface (or junction) between the superconductor and the other material. The robustness of the technique, with respect to the range of the second nonsuperconducting materials used, suggests its wide applicability.

In all of the devices we have realized and investigated, quantum tunneling of quasiparticles from the superconductor to the second material occurs and underpins their diode function. By tunneling spectroscopy, we have shown that the interfacial junctions in these devices all exhibit nonlinear current-voltage characteristics that are related to the gap in the energy spectrum of the quasiparticles in the superconductor. We expect, therefore, that the junction in a hybrid device that involves either a high-temperature superconductor or a novel nonsuperconducting material in question can be exploited as a window to the electronic physics of the superconductor or the new material. We also anticipate that our work opens up a line of new possibilities for electronic and optical devices.