This work investigates the photovoltaic properties of a BHJ solar cell made of an active layer constituted by phenyl-C-61-butyric acid methyl ester and a novel polyalkylthiophene derivative functionalized in the side chain with porphyrin dye. The polymer was fully characterized by FT-IR, NMR, UV-vis, GPC, DSC and TGA techniques and the active layer by cyclic voltammetry and AFM. The results of this study indicate that the solar cell made of polythiophene containing a 25% molar content of sensitizer dye as the active layer, exhibits higher power conversion efficiency, short circuit current and fill factor values than the reference cell based on polythiophene completely devoid of porphyrin. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.