Order in Implication Zroupoids

The variety $\mathbf{I}$ of implication zroupoids was defined and investigated by Sankappanavar ([7]) as a generalization of De Morgan algebras. Also, in [7], several new subvarieties of $\mathbf{I}$ were introduced, including the subvariety $\mathbf{I_{2,0}}$, defined by the identity: $x" \approx x$, which plays a crucial role in this paper. Several more new subvarieties of $\mathbf{I}$, including the subvariety $\mathbf{SL}$ of semilattices with a least element $0$, are studied in [3], and an explicit description of semisimple subvarieties of $\mathbf{I}$ is given in [5]. It is well known that the operation $\land$ induces a partial order ($\sqsubseteq$) in the variety $\mathbf{SL}$ and also in the variety $\mathbf{DM}$ of De Morgan algebras. As both $\mathbf{SL}$ and $\mathbf{DM}$ are subvarieties of $\mathbf{I}$ and the definition of partial order can be expressed in terms of the implication and the constant, it is but natural to ask whether the relation $\sqsubseteq$ (now defined) on $\mathbf{I}$ is actually a partial order in some (larger) subvariety of $\mathbf{I}$ that includes $\mathbf{SL}$ and $\mathbf{DM}$. The purpose of the present paper is two-fold: Firstly, a complete answer is given to the above mentioned problem. Indeed, our first main theorem shows that the variety $\mathbf{I_{2,0}}$ is a maximal subvariety of $\mathbf{I}$ with respect to the property that the relation $\sqsubseteq$ is a partial order on its members. In view of this result, one is then naturally led to consider the problem of determining the number of non-isomorphic algebras in $\mathbf{I_{2,0}}$ that can be defined on an $n$-element chain (herein called $\mathbf{I_{2,0}}$-chains), $n$ being a natural number. Secondly, we answer this problem in our second main theorem, which says that, for each $n \in \mathbb{N}$, there are exactly $n$ nonisomorphic $\mathbf{I_{2,0}}$-chains of size $n$.