Australia’s critical minerals reserves are being used as leverage by the Albanese government to try and persuade the Trump administration to reverse its decision to hit steel and aluminium with tariffs and not proceed with a feared second wave against agricultural products and pharmaceuticals…Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday described Donald Trump’s decision to snub steel and aluminium exports as “entirely unjustified” and “against the spirit of our two nations’ enduring friendship” but ruled out retaliatory measures against US imports because tariffs were an act of economic self harm…“President Trump’s administration has talked about the importance of critical minerals... and has talked about the importance of America gaining more secure domestic supply arrangements and changes to the global market on that,” Wong told the ABC. “Now, Australia obviously is a country where we are blessed with many critical minerals. You would anticipate being as disciplined and as focused as we are, of course we listened to those signals…“We have plenty of all the critical minerals that are needed for defence or decarbonisation. So I think this is an area where we can find complementarity between our two economies,” he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he believes U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to annex Canada are in part because of his desire to control its critical minerals. Andrew Chang explains why they're so attractive to the U.S., and how China is raising the stakes.

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Northvolt AB filed for bankruptcy in Sweden, bringing to an end a company that was once seen as the future of Europe’s battery production…The Swedish supplier for electric-vehicle manufacturers will see its business and its assets sold by a Swedish court-appointed trustee, according to a statement on Wednesday…It had already run out of money last year after a series of operational blunders and filed for bankruptcy protection in the US in November. That legal process provided the company with a temporary lifeline while it sought to get its precarious finances on a stable footing and find new industrial partners. But those efforts were in vain…The main operational entities Northvolt AB and Northvolt Ett AB — as well as Northvolt Labs AB, Northvolt Revolt AB and Northvolt Systems AB — filed with the Swedish court. Northvolt Germany and Northvolt North America are not filing for bankruptcy in their respective jurisdictions, the company said…“A few years ago, we lost the industrial battle for solar panels,” EU lawmaker Pascal Canfin said in a statement. “It would be a strategic mistake to give up on batteries.”…“We’re hoping that a long-term solution can be found with an opportunity for someone else to take over the business and ensure continued battery production in Sweden,” Energy Minister Ebba Busch said in a post on X…After selling its first battery cells in 2022, Northvolt’s losses tripled in 2023 to $1.03 billion. The company tried to woo investors that year with plans for a stock-market listing at a $20 billion valuation. But by then the growth plans were already coming apart. 

The new bismuth-based transistor could revolutionize chip design, offering higher efficiency while bypassing silicon’s limitations…A team of researchers at Peking University claims to have made a breakthrough in chip technology, potentially reshaping the semiconductor race…Their newly developed 2D transistor is said to be 40% faster than the latest 3-nanometre silicon chips from Intel and TSMC while consuming 10% less energy. This innovation, they say, could allow China to bypass the challenges of silicon-based chipmaking entirely…The Chinese team’s breakthrough revolves around a bismuth-based transistor that outperforms the most advanced commercial chips from Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and Belgium’s Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre…The study describes how the team developed a gate-all-around field-effect transistor (GAAFET) using bismuth-based materials. This design is a significant departure from the Fin Field-Effect Transistor (FinFET) structure, which has been the industry standard since Intel commercialized it in 2011…The PKU team overcame these obstacles by engineering their own bismuth-based materials, specifically Bi2O2Se and Bi2SeO5, which serve as the semiconductor and high-dielectric oxide material, respectively. The high dielectric constant of these materials reduces energy loss, minimizes voltage requirements, and enhances computing power while cutting energy consumption…With transistors based on this technology capable of running 1.4 times faster than the most advanced silicon-based chips at 90% of their energy consumption, the PKU team is now working on scaling up production. They have already built small logic units using the new transistors, demonstrating high voltage gain at ultra-low operating voltages.