A chemical species is said to be fluxional if it undergoes rapid degenerate rearrangements (generally detectable by methods which allow the observation of the behaviour of individual nuclei in a rearranged chemical species, e.g. NMR, X-ray).
Example: Bullvalene (1 209 600 interconvertible arrangements of the ten CH groups).
The term is also used to designate positional change among ligands of complex compounds and organometallics. In these cases, the change is not necessarily degenerate. See also valence tautomerization.
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