We investigate a defective core photonic crystal fiber for broadband continuum generation. Different geometries of fiber design are discussed to emphasize the role of a defect in the fiber characteristics. The idea of incorporating a defect in the core enable an additional degree of design freedom to tailor the fiber parameters. Particularly, we identify that by properly choosing the size of the defect and air hole size one can realize suitable fiber design for various nonlinear applications. Out of several fiber designs, we recognize that designing fiber with minimum positive dispersion along with a large nonlinearity coefficient is a potential candidate for supercontinuum generation. The results of numerical simulation of the broadband continuum at different parameter settings are analyzed and compared with the conventional counterpart. In the similar simulation environment, the continuum realized in the proposed defective core photonic crystal fiber is significantly broader than the fiber without defect. Thus, this hybrid fiber design can be a new class of fibers for the future generation of broadband sources. © 2019 Elsevier GmbH