UDC Ireland, a wholly-owned subsidiary of US-based Universal Display, has paid around €87 million for BASF’s intellectual property on organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). BASF’s OLED assets include more than 500 issued and pending patents around the world, and largely comprise phosphorescent materials and technologies with an average lifetime of 10 years.

The sale means that the German group has now finalized its withdrawal from OLED research which it ceased at the end of 2015. Universal Display’s president and CEO Steven Abramson said one of the company’s key objectives is to develop and deliver an all-phosphorescent emissive stack. “We believe that this acquisition will help further these research efforts, principally in the development of commercial blue emissive systems,” he said, adding that he expects the acquisition to strengthen the commercial development pipeline of new and next-generation OLED systems.

The company has invested nearly £400 million in R&D to move from a start-up in 1994 to a leading player in the global OLED ecosystem. It said it continues to make progress on red, green, yellow and blue emitters and hosts, as well as expanding its core competencies of phosphorescent OLEDs and other technologies such as transparent and stacked OLEDs, including manufacturing processes and equipment.

OLEDSs have gained much interest in creating digital displays in devices such as television and computer screens, and mobile phones, due to their superior image quality.