The driving forces, business needs and requirements behind the establishment of this Consortium are the necessity to broaden the range of microsystems-based products and at the same time to multiply their capabilities by introducing new materials and processes that are reasonably compatible with currently broadly used IC-based, batch-fabrication processes.

The µSAPIENT CA project aims to create a far more focussed and sustainable European-wide infrastructure for coordination of research activities, linking of relevant national and international projects, organisations and initiatives and dissemination and promotion of results in facilitating a new level of synergetic integration of micro- and nano- manufacturing technologies in support of a number of critical EU sectors.

The key objectives are:
- To carry out a critical analysis of emerging Micro and Nano Technology (MNT) that result from many complementary EC, national and industrially funded Research and Development projects. The aim of this analysis is to create roadmaps for their effective integration in new manufacturing platforms, underpinning the development of new multi-material MST-based products (technology roadmaps vs. product-driven MNT roadmaps).
- To identify gaps in emerging MNT that prevent their effective integration and up-scaling, and thus to assist national and EC funding bodies in defining the priorities of their future R&D programmes.
- To create a forum for coordinating the efforts of many complementary R&D projects in ERA and thereby ensuring that technology and application challenges are addressed concurrently. This should facilitate and speed up the development of MNT-based manufacturing platforms that are necessary for full-scale fabrication of micro-components and multi-material micro-systems.