Preceramic polymer printing binders for advanced ceramics

A process for preparing a ceramic part comprising (a) depositing a layer of powder material on a working surface of a binder jet machine;

• (b) depositing a printing binder composition comprising a binder into the layer of powder material;
• (c) selectively printing the binder into the layer of powder material in a first pattern to generate a printed layer, wherein the pattern is representative of a structure of a layer of the ceramic part;
• (d) curing the binder to generate a green body part which comprises the cured printed layer;
• (e) depositing another layer of powder material onto the green body part;
• (f) repeating steps (b), (c), and (d) in a layer-by-layer manner until all of the layers of the entire green body part have been printed;
• (g) curing the entire green body part of step (f);
• and (h) pyrolyzing the green body part into a brown part at a temperature effective to consolidate and densify the printed layers of powder material, (i) impregnating the brown part with a second binder composition comprising a polymer infiltration and pyrolysis (PIP) densification resin and pyrolyzing the resulting impregnated brown part to further densify the brown part and (j) repeating step (i) until the ceramic part is prepared, said printing binder and second binder compositions independently comprising one or more preceramic polymers, wherein the one or more preceramic polymers comprise silicon based polymeric species, each having a molecular weight ranging from about 100 to about 10,000 Daltons, said printing binder composition having an Ohnesorge number ranging from about 0.1 to about 1.0.