You can use generally recognized syntax for multiple () or single (?) character wildcard searches. Note the Lucene query parser supports the use of these symbols with a single term, and not a phrase.
For example to find documents containing the words with the prefix "note", such as "notebook" or "notepad", specify "note".
Note
You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.
No text analysis is performed on wildcard search queries. At query time, wildcard query terms are compared against analyzed terms in the search index and expanded.
SearchMode parameter considerations
The impact of searchMode on queries, as described in Simple query syntax in Azure Search, applies equally to the Lucene query syntax. Namely, searchMode in conjunction with NOT operators can result in query outcomes that might seem unusual if you aren't clear on the implications of how you set the parameter. If you retain the default, searchMode=any, and use a NOT operator, the operation is computed as an OR action, such that "New York" NOT "Seattle" returns all cities that are not Seattle.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/searchservice/simple-query-syntax-in-azure-search
Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/searchservice/lucene-query-syntax-in-azure-search#bkmk_wildcard