CHARGE QUANTIZATION EFFECTS AND THE SUPERCONDUCTIVITY OF SMALL PARTICLES.

The superconducting properties of granulated systems differ significantly from those of bulk bodies because the finite volume of the granulated system must be taken into account. This leads to a number of special properties, including an increase in the critical temperature T//c, caused by the spatial quantization of the electron and phonon spectra and the smearing-out of the phase transition as a result of the thermodynamical fluctuations in the order parameter. The sensitivity to quantization of the electric charge in a superconducting particle of sufficiently small size is investigated and it is shown that the effects of charge quantization play an important role in the superconducting properties of small particles.