Graphene is a fully flexible material.

You’ve probably never heard of graphene, a carbon-based material, but it might be stuffed into your pocket or wrapped around your wrist in the not-too-distant future.

According to the American Chemical Society, graphene is a “wonder material” 100 times stronger than steel and is so thin that a single ounce of it could to cover 28 football fields. It could also usher in a new era of ultra-slim and fully flexible gadgets.

Although graphene has been in the news before, A.C.S. said that it was now currently under development for use in flexible solar panels “that could be used to cover the outside surface of a building, in addition to the roof.” And as soon as these solar panels actually become a viable product, cell phones would be next up on the flexible list.

“Touch screens made with graphene as their conductive element could be printed on thin plastic instead of glass, so they would be light and flexible, which could make cell phones as thin as a piece of paper and foldable enough to slip into a pocket,” the A.C.S. explained in a report on its Web site this week. “Because of graphene’s incredible strength, these cell phones would be nearly unbreakable.”

The March issue of Nature noted that the graphene could also be used to create bionic implants, too, which are essentially electronic devices that are placed inside the human body. Nature predicts that once scientists figure out how to make large batches of graphene economically, it could ”radically advance technologies ranging from transistors to touch screens to solar cells to bionic implants.”

So when can we expect these wonder devices? Scientists aren’t sure just yet, but they do predict that the first consumer application for graphene will be a flexible cell phone.