ABSTRACT SYNTHESIS OF MONOMERS FOR NEW CONJUGATED POLYMERS This dissertation addresses the problem of synthesis of different monomers for donor and acceptor polymers in photovoltaic applications. In general, functionalization of conjugated polymers and understanding of molecular packing of electron donors and electron acceptors are very important to produce efficient solar cells. As a result, it is important to design and synthesize novel monomers which will require making new π-conjugated donors and acceptors polymers and understand the influence of these new polymers in bulk heterojunction to design polymer solar cells. In this study, two different monomers were synthesized. The first monomer was designed and synthesized to investigate the effect of π-conjugated linker directly attached to the polymer backbone where the polymer backbone was based on thiophene unit and conjugated linker was 1,2,3-triazole. In a different study, a conjugated monomer based on benzthiadiazole was designed and synthesized in order to synthesize new acceptor homopolymers and alternating copolymers. Two different monomers with different alkyl side chains based on benzthiadiazole were synthesized and subject to Suzuki and Stille polymerization to get respective polymers.