Three new carbazole-based dyes (DB-CH, DTB-CH, DT-CH) have been synthesized. The dye structures were built from an aliphatic hexyl which served as an electron donor and barbituric acid, thiobarbituric acid and thiazolidine-2,4-dione moieties which served as acceptors. The photophysical and electrochemical properties of the dyes were investigated by UV spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry (CV). The barbituric acid, thiobarbituric acid and thiazolidine-2,4-dione derivatives were found to affect both the molar extinction coefficients and lambda(max) which was likely due to the extension of the pi-conjugation structures of the dyes. In the best case, conversion efficiencies up to 2.16% under full sunlight irradiation were obtained for the DSSCs which incorporated these new dyes. Our study indicated that the inclusion of thiazolidine-2,4-dione as an electron acceptor in the dye structure can lead to an improvement in its photovoltaic performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.