Dear Khaoula,
welcome,
There are some materials which have a band gap matched with that required for the highest conversion efficiency. This energy gap is about 1.35 eV. The most common material is crystalline silicon which gives conversion efficiency as high as about 24 percent. Gallium arsenide solar cells can reach 30 percent solar efficiency but this material is more expensive and very less abundant. There is also CdTe which can arrive to about 22 percent efficiency. There is new materials , the perovskites which give promising efficiency of about 22 percent. All these efficiencies are realized by single junction structures. Multijunction solar cells can even achieve appreciably higher efficiencies.
Best wishes
The discussion should not be limited with efficiency only, cost is important and correct no doubt but the stability is also factor. Working life of PV panel requires attention.Therefore, cost per hour or day or year of working be taken into account.Thanks all for raising and answering the issue.
Solar cells can be classified into first, second and third generation cells. The first generation cells—also called conventional, traditional or wafer-based cells—are made of crystalline silicon, the commercially predominant PV technology, that includes materials such as polysilicon and monocrystalline silicon.
I think that the GaAs is the most efficient material till now; however, it is relatively expensive and toxic in comparison with crystalline technologies. You may read the following
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285295884_PV_technologies_History_technological_advances_and_characterization?_iepl%5BviewId%5D=Dpvj27FHM0IK9GV5M8rOKoP6&_iepl%5BprofilePublicationItemVariant%5D=default&_iepl%5Bcontexts%5D%5B0%5D=prfpi&_iepl%5BtargetEntityId%5D=PB%3A285295884&_iepl%5BinteractionType%5D=publicationTitle
Data PV database 2014
it's depends, mainly, on the structure (single or multi junctions) (of course the materials have an important role to reach higher percent solar efficiency). With multijunctions you can reach more than 40 percent solar efficiency.
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