page_title: Phase diagram
section_title: Binary mixtures
hierarchical_section_title: Phase diagram / Types / Binary mixtures
context_page_description: A phase diagram in physical chemistry, engineering, mineralogy, and materials science is a type of chart used to show conditions at which thermodynamically distinct phases occur and coexist at equilibrium.
context_section_description: Other much more complex types of phase diagrams can be constructed, particularly when more than one pure component is present. In that case, concentration becomes an important variable.  Phase diagrams with more than two dimensions can be constructed that show the effect of more than two variables on the phase of a substance. Phase diagrams can use other variables in addition to or in place of temperature, pressure and composition, for example the strength of an applied electrical or magnetic field, and they can also involve substances that take on more than just three states of matter.
  One type of phase diagram plots temperature against the relative concentrations of two substances in a binary mixture called a binary phase diagram, as shown at right. Such a mixture can be either a solid solution, eutectic or peritectic, among others. These two types of mixtures result in very different graphs. Another type of binary phase diagram is a boiling-point diagram for a mixture of two components, i. e. chemical compounds. For two particular volatile components at a certain pressure such as atmospheric pressure, a boiling-point diagram shows what vapor (gas) compositions are in equilibrium with given liquid compositions depending on temperature.  In a typical binary boiling-point diagram, temperature is plotted on a vertical axis and mixture composition on a horizontal axis.
  A simple example diagram with hypothetical components 1 and 2 in a non-azeotropic mixture is shown at right.  The fact that there are two separate curved lines joining the boiling points of the pure components means that the vapor composition is usually not the same as the liquid composition the vapor is in equilibrium with. See Vapor–liquid equilibrium for more information.
  In addition to the above-mentioned types of phase diagrams, there are thousands of other possible combinations. Some of the major features of phase diagrams include congruent points, where a solid phase transforms directly into a liquid. There is also the peritectoid, a point where two solid phases combine into one solid phase during cooling. The inverse of this, when one solid phase transforms into two solid phases during cooling, is called the eutectoid.
  A complex phase diagram of great technological importance is that of the iron–carbon system for less than 7% carbon (see steel).
  The x-axis of such a diagram represents the concentration variable of the mixture. As the mixtures are typically far from dilute and their density as a function of temperature is usually unknown, the preferred concentration measure is mole fraction. A volume-based measure like molarity would be inadvisable.
caption: Boiling-point diagram