Abstract Four new donor–acceptor (donor)[D–A (D)], PBDT-PTQ, PBDT-PTTQ, PBDT-TQ, and PBDT-TTQ, bearing the same backbone of alternative benzodithiophene (BDT) and quinoxaline units but with phenylene thienyl, phenylene di-thienyl, thienyl and di-thienyl groups (other donors), respectively, at the acceptor quinoxaline units, were designed and synthesized to investigate the impacts of the conjugated side chains at the acceptor units ...