Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. Any of several forms of microscope that use a beam of electrons rather than one of light and thus has a much greater resolving power
WordNet
n. a microscope that is similar in purpose to a light microscope but achieves much greater resolving power by using a parallel beam of electrons to illuminate the object instead of a beam of light
Wikipedia
An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, the electron microscope has a higher resolving power than a light microscope and can reveal the structure of smaller objects. A transmission electron microscope can achieve better than 50 pm resolution and magnifications of up to about 10,000,000x whereas most light microscopes are limited by diffraction to about 200 nm resolution and useful magnifications below 2000x.
The transmission electron microscope uses electrostatic and electromagnetic lenses to control the electron beam and focus it to form an image. These electron optical lenses are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope.
Electron microscopes are used to investigate the ultrastructure of a wide range of biological and inorganic specimens including microorganisms, cells, large molecules, biopsy samples, metals, and crystals. Industrially, the electron microscope is often used for quality control and failure analysis. Modern electron microscopes produce electron micrographs using specialized digital cameras and frame grabbers to capture the image.
Usage examples of "electron microscope".
It would not help an average germ or microbe to be invisible to an electron microscope.
Limited as it was, the electron microscope was their only available high-power tool.
He undertook to look at the structure of the cells of the visual region of the brain - the visual cortex - in the dark-reared and light-exposed rats by means of an electron microscope.
He's tryin' to jury-rig the electron microscope to get nanometer resolution.
It looked like the Ebola Zaire Mayinga strain under the electron microscope, and that was the worst of the sub-types of the virus.
There was a scanning electron microscope image of a virus in black and white.
It was a tenth of the size of the red blood cell, which in the vacuum of the scanning electron microscope was a wrinkled oval, like a gray raisin.
She looked up from the strange convolutions of the micro-electron microscope.
According to the scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive X-ray, or SEM/EDX, the elemental composition of the material in question was magnesium.
THE TRACE EVIDENCE laboratories were on the third floor, and my first stop was the scanning electron microscope, or SEM, which exposed a specimen, such as the metal shaving from the Shephard case, to a beam of electrons.