The 22-year-old has been beaten twice in the quarterfinals and three times in the fourth round at majors, but bounced back from a disappointing opening set on Wednesday to finally make that last four breakthrough.
He also becomes the first German in 10 years to reach a grand slam semifinal.
"I've done well in other tournaments, I've won Masters, I've won World Tour Finals, but I never could break that barrier at a grand slam," said Zverev.
"I'm happy to be in the semifinals. Stan played a great match, a great tournament beating Daniil Medvedev last match in five sets.
"I honestly don't know what to say ... you guys (the crowd) cannot imagine what this means to me and I hope this will be the first of many."
Zverev serve
To reach his first ever major final, Zverev will have to navigate his way past either Rafael Nadal or Dominic Thiem, who contest the last singles quarterfinal.
Wawrinka, an Australian Open champion in 2014, broke Zverev twice in the first set to race into an early 5-0 lead before taking the first set off the No. 7 seed.
Zverev rallied to take the second set, where he didn't drop a point on serve.
Both players broke each other at the start of the third, but a Zverev break at 2-2 shifted the game's momentum.
He closed out the fourth set after two early breaks, ending the match with an 80% success rate on his first serve and 13 aces.
Halep eases through
Meanwhile Simona Halep and Garbine Muguruza will meet in the semifinals of the women's draw after respective victories over Anett Kontaveit and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
Halep, who won at Wimbledon last year and at the French Open in 2018, is bidding to win her first title in Melbourne.
She cruised past Estonia's Kontaveit 6-1 6-1 in just 53 minutes, maintaining her record of not dropping a set in the tournament.
"I felt great today on court," said world No. 3 Halep.
"I feel my game, I feel strong on my legs and I knew how to play against her. I've just been focused on every game I played, and I really enjoy playing here in Melbourne."
Muguruza had to work harder for a berth in the final four, defeating Pavlyuchenkova 7-5 6-3 despite the Russian going a break up in both sets.
Having arrived in Melbourne unseeded, two-time grand slam champion Muguruza admitted that patience has been key to her run at the Australian Open, a tournament where she had never previously progressed past the quarterfinals.
"The toughest moment is when you work hard, work like before or even harder, and you don't feel like results are coming fast," she told reporters.
"I think the tricky part for us is that athletes sometimes can get a little desperate and get too impatient about it.
"It's very tough to be for so many years at the top of the game and being that consistent. It's something super hard to do, very few players can hold that for many, many years in a row."
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