Tacticity

Tacticity refers to the relative stereochemistry of adjacent chiral centers within a polymer chain.

The practical significance of tacticity rests in the link between tacticity and the physical properties of the polymer.

An atactic polymer has no regularity from chiral center to chiral center.

A syntactic (or syndiotactic) polymer has successive chiral centers with alternating stereochemical configurations.

An isotactic polymer has each successive chiral center in the same stereochemical configuration.

The regularity of the polymer's structure influences the degree to which it has rigid, crystalline long range order or flexible, amorphous long range disorder.

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