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Active colloids and liquid crystals are capable of locally converting themacroscopically-supplied energy into directional motion and promise a host ofnew applications, ranging from drug delivery to cargo transport at themesoscale. Here we uncover how topological solitons in liquid crystals canlocally transform electric energy to translational motion and allow for thetransport of cargo along directions dependent on frequency of the appliedelectric field. By combining polarized optical video microscopy and numericalmodeling that reproduces both the equilibrium structures of solitons and theirtemporal evolution in applied fields, we uncover the physical underpinningsbehind this reconfigurable motion and study how it depends on the structure andtopology of solitons. We show that, unexpectedly, the directional motion ofsolitons with and without the cargo arises mainly from the asymmetry inrotational dynamics of molecular ordering in liquid crystal rather than fromthe asymmetry of fluid flows, as in conventional active soft matter systems.

Collective behavior of active topological solitons, knotted streamlines, and transport of cargo in liquid crystals