The phrase "a staggered conformation" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts related to chemistry or molecular structures, describing a specific arrangement of atoms or groups in a molecule.
Example: "The molecule adopts a staggered conformation to minimize steric hindrance between the substituents."
Alternatives: "a staggered arrangement" or "a staggered structure".
Such repulsive interactions may be alleviated by taking a staggered conformation, i.e. = 0,π) or (π,0).
Based on these models, it was clear that in order to allow for the most efficient packing of geometric units, the approaching methyl groups adopted a staggered conformation resulting in columnar packing of the hydrocarbon units which were shifted with respect to each other.
X-ray crystallography confirmed that octaphenylrhodocene has a sandwich structure with a staggered conformation.
This compound is analogous to the lighter ferrocene, ruthenocene, and osmocene, and is expected to have the two cyclopentadienyl rings in an eclipsed conformation like ruthenocene and osmocene and not in a staggered conformation like ferrocene.
In most of the experimental structures, they occupy positions that are close to be not exactly at the positions corresponding to a staggered conformation.
Therefore, we place H-atoms in the sp3H3 class in a staggered conformation (labeled A1, A2 & H in Fig 1a) without further optimization, although they may have rotational freedom around the A B bond.
The atoms involved in an sp3 hybrid orbital have a preference for a staggered conformations because this state ensures the minimum local steric repulsion between the atoms [29], [30].
The vast majority of the angles were in a narrow range characterized by an approximately staggered conformation on one end and an eclipsed rotamer in which the benzene ring was aligned with one of the S=O bonds on the other end of the range.
Quantitatively, the free energy cost of moving a H-atom from the staggered conformation to an eclipsed conformation is around 3.0 kcal/mol [29].
On the other hand, for the neat compounds in crystalline phase, intermolecular interactions induce conformational disorder, leading to presence in the room temperature polymorphic forms of monomeric units with the staggered (or nearly staggered) conformation.
From the conformational point of view, using the Newman projection formula (Fig. 2), Ha and Hb are not equivalent due to restricted rotation around the C4 N bond (Fig. 1); as a result, they can couple via germinal coupling depending on the HaCHb angle in addition to their vicinal coupling of the NHc proton, as shown by the staggered conformation of (20) (Fig. 2).
