Keremane, K.S.Abdellah, I.M.Naik, P.El-Shafei, A.Vasudeva Adhikari, A.V.2026-02-052020Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2020, 22, 40, pp. 23169-2318414639076https://doi.org/10.1039/d0cp02781bhttps://idr.nitk.ac.in/handle/123456789/23662Herein, we report the design and synthesis of four new thiophene-bridged D-?-A configured organic dyes T1-4 comprising different donors, ?-spacers and anchoring units, as potential sensitizers and co-sensitizers for DSSCs. The current work also highlights their structural, photophysical, thermal, electrochemical, theoretical, and photoelectrochemical studies, including evaluation of their structure-property relationships. The optical results revealed that the dyes T1-4 display ?abs and ?emi in the range of 402-461 nm and 556-575 nm, respectively, with a bandgap in the order of 2.31-2.58 eV. Furthermore, the results showed that the dyes possess all the pre-requisites to act as sensitizers/co-sensitizers. Among the tested dyes, the device based on sensitizer T2 achieved the highest PCE compared to the other three dyes, under the standard conditions. Furthermore, their co-sensitized devices were fabricated by co-adsorbing them with the well-known Ru-based MH-12 sensitizer and interestingly the co-sensitizer T3 carrying an alkoxy group and a barbituric acid anchor displayed the highest PCE of 8.79%, which is much higher than that of MH-12 alone (8.18%). Conclusively, the study furnishes a deeper understanding of the intricacies involved in the structural modification of sensitizers/co-sensitizers in achieving an enhanced performance of the devices. This journal is © 2020 the Owner Societies.ThiopheneBarbituric acidCo-sensitizationPhotoelectrochemicalsPhotophysicalPre-requisitesStandard conditionsStructural modificationsStructure property relationshipsChromophores