Naik, P.Keremane, K.S.Elmorsy, M.R.Su, R.El-Shafei, A.Adhikari, A.V.2020-03-312020-03-312018Solar Energy, 2018, Vol.169, , pp.386-391https://idr.nitk.ac.in/handle/123456789/11901Herein, we report a comparative study of four interesting metal-free carbazole based organic dyes with different structural configurations, carrying electron deficient barbituric acid (C1-4), as effective co-sensitizers in DSSCs sensitized with NCSU-10 dye. The new entities comprise different structural architectures, viz. D-A (C1), D-?-A (C2), D-D-?-A (C3) and D-A-?-A (C4) configurations with same accepting/anchoring moiety. They consist of carbazole as donor scaffold linked to barbituric acid as an acceptor/anchoring unit via different ?-spacers. This paper describes the study of all the four co-sensitizers with regard to their structural, photophysical, electrochemical, theoretical and photovoltaic investigations. Also, it includes their structure-performance correlation study in detail. The devices co-sensitized with C1-4 displayed the superior photovoltaic performance when compared to NCSU-10 alone. The results ameliorate the role of efficient co-sensitizers to yield DSSC with improved performance. 2018 Elsevier LtdArticle