In organic chemistry, a staggered conformation is a chemical conformation of an ethane-like moiety abcX-Ydef in which the substituents a,b,and c are at the maximum distance from d,e,and f. This requires the torsion angles to be 60°.
Such a conformation exists in any open chain single chemical bond connecting two sp3 hybridised atoms, and is normally a conformational energy minimum.For some molecules such as those of n-butane, there can be special versions of staggered conformations called gauche and anti; see first Newman projection diagram in Conformational isomerism.