Investigation of newly designed asymmetric chromophore in view of power conversion efficiency improvements for organic solar cells

•Novel D1-π-A-D2 organic chromophore based on benzothiadiazole unit, OMe-BBTz is synthesized•OMe-BBTz exhibits small optical band gap of ~1.98 eV with reasonable HOMO (−5.39 eV)•ITO/PEDOT:PSS/OMe-BBTz:PC61BM (1:3, w/w)/Au shows PCE of 3.53 %with JSC of ~8.71 mA/cm2 and VOC of ~0.698 V.