Implicants
Implicant is a product/minterm term in Sum of Products (SOP) or sum/maxterm term in Product of Sums (POS) of a Boolean function.
Example:
For example., consider a boolean function F(A, B, C) defined as:
F = AB + ABC + BC.
its implicants are AB, ABC, and BC.
Now let’s understand prime implicants and explicit implicants.
Prime Implicants and Explicit Implicants
Implicants play a crucial role in Boolean logic, as they form the building blocks for both SOP and POS expressions. An implicant can be thought of as a product term in SOP or a sum term in POS representing a Boolean function. Essentially, implicants encapsulate the various input combinations (minterm or maxterm) for which the Boolean function evaluates to true.