Eutectic, the one mixture of a set of substances able to dissolve in one another as liquids that, of all such mixtures, liquefies at the lowest temperature. If an arbitrarily chosen liquid mixture of such substances is cooled, a temperature will be reached at which one component will begin to separate in its solid form and will continue to do so as the temperature is further decreased. As this component separates, the remaining liquid continuously becomes richer in the other component, until, eventually, the composition of the liquid reaches a value at which both substances begin to separate simultaneously as an intimate mixture of solids. This composition is the eutectic composition and the temperature at which it solidifies is the eutectic temperature; if the original liquid had the eutectic composition, no solid would separate until the eutectic temperature was reached; then both solids would separate in the same ratio as that in the liquid, while the composition of the remaining liquid, that of the deposited solid, and the temperature all remained unchanged throughout the solidification.

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Figure 1: Phase diagram of argon.
...adding lead to tin lowers the melting point of the tin-rich alloy, and adding tin to lead lowers the melting point of the lead-rich alloy. A 62-percent-tin 38-percent-lead alloy, which is called the eutectic composition, has the lowest melting point of all, much lower than that of either metal. Eutectic lead-tin alloys are used for soldering.
Modern version of the periodic table of the elements.
...of the elements participating in the alloy. Elements with similar atomic volumes form solid solutions (that is, mix completely in all proportions); some dissimilarity in atomic volumes results in eutectic-type systems (solutions formed over limited concentration ranges), and further dissimilarity results in totally immiscible systems. The high-pressure transition in potassium, rubidium, and...
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