  More and more materials, with a growing variety of properties, are built into
electronic devices. This is motivated both by increased device performance and
by the studies of materials themselves. An important type of device is a
Josephson junction based on the proximity effect between a quantum material and
a superconductor, useful for fundamental research as well as for quantum and
other technologies. When both junction contacts are placed on the same surface,
such as a two-dimensional material, the junction is called ``planar". One
outstanding challenge is that not all materials are amenable to the standard
planar junction fabrication. The device quality, rather than the intrinsic
characteristics, may be defining the results. Here, we introduce a technique in
which nanowires are placed on the surface and act as a shadow mask for the
superconductor. The advantages are that the smallest dimension is determined by
the nanowire diameter and does not require lithography, and that the junction
is not exposed to chemicals such as etchants. We demonstrate this method with
an InAs quantum well, using two superconductors - Al and Sn, and two
semiconductor nanowires - InAs and InSb. The junctions exhibit critical current
levels consistent with transparent interfaces and uniform width. We show that
the template nanowire can be operated as a self-aligned electrostatic gate.
Beyond single junctions, we create SQUIDs with two gate-tunable junctions. We
suggest that our method can be used for a large variety of quantum materials
including van der Waals layers, topological insulators, Weyl semimetals and
future materials for which proximity effect devices is a promising research
avenue.

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics