Conformational disorder

{
  "id": "MLC-T-CHM-002415",
  "term": "Conformational disorder",
  "field": "Chemistry",
  "definition": "A structural disorder in a polymer crystal in which chemically equivalent repeat units adopt different conformations while sharing the same lattice, in a statistical mixture. The chain axes and packing stay ordered, so the crystal keeps its lattice despite the variation in torsion angles. It differs from configurational disorder, where units of different configuration share lattice sites.",
  "subject": "Polymer",
  "see_also": [
    "structural disorder"
  ],
  "references": [
    "Purple Book, 1st ed., p. 80 (http://old.iupac.org/publications/books/author/metanomski.html)"
  ],
  "url": "https://mlchart.com/terminology/chemistry/conformational-disorder/"
}