Monday was a new day for employees of the Hometown Division of Air Products and Chemicals Inc., as the company’s planned spinoff of its electronics materials technology division was completed.

Personnel at the Hometown plant, are now employees of Versum Materials, specializing in semiconductors and related electronics. The plant employs approximately 250 people.Officials of the new company rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning, signaling the company’s successful spinoff from Air Products and Chemicals.Hometown site manager Karl Nolte said Monday’s change “doesn’t feel that much different. We’ve been preparing for this day for a year.”While Versum Materials may be a new company, it’s built on more than 30 years of experience in the rapidly expanding technology industry.The former Air Products Materials Division offered specialty gases, specialty chemicals, services and equipment to the electronics industry. It also offered performance chemical solutions for a number of industries including coatings, inks, adhesives, personal care, institutional and industrial cleaning, and mining.The spinoff is seen by corporate officials as the opportunity to allow the company to put its entire focus on specialty materials and stand, or fail, on its own.Semiconductors are substances that are able to conduct electricity to varying degrees. They can be any type of material that can be manipulated by the introduction of chemicals.The conductive nature of the semiconductor can also vary depending on the current/voltage applied, or on the intensity of infrared/visible/ultraviolet light or X-rays.They are used in the manufacturing process of electronic devices such as smartphones, computers, tablets, and are also used in the automotive industry and robotics.Versum works with companies to stretch the boundaries of science and technology, looking to develop the “next big thing,” the next generation of technology. This includes efforts to shrink the size of memory chips while boosting capacity, mobility, cloud computing, making large amounts of data available and the ability to interconnect devices.With its global headquarters in Tempe. Arizona, Versum has 14 manufacturing and six research and development facilities in the Americas and Asia, employing 1,900 people.For the Hometown plant employees, there have been no layoffs and there are none planned in the immediate future, according to Nolte.“It’s a great new start for us here at the plant. We’re the same people, just a new name.”