In a thin layer of liquid crystal (a substance that flows like a liquid but has molecules arranged in order, as in a solid) vortices smaller than the thickness of a human hair are born. These vortices resemble tiny spinning tops: they can move without breaking apart and behave almost like real particles.
By applying an electric field to the layer, scientists made such a vortex travel along a pre-drawn line, like a tram on rails. The speed can be changed on the fly by simply adjusting the voltage. The secret is that the liquid crystal molecules bend slightly under the field, and this bending pushes the vortex forward.
This trick is a step toward creating microrobots that could swim inside living tissues, deliver drugs precisely to a specific cell, or assemble tiny components. Wireless, motorless motion control is an old dream of engineers, and now it's one step closer.
as written by the authors arXiv:2603.24887
Design of soft matter capable of controllable microscale dynamics is a frontier of modern science. Jiahao Chen et al. demonstrate that an electric field can drive particle-like solitons-skyrmions in a chiral nematic along a preprogrammed trajectory with a variable speed within a two-dimensional plane. The effect is rooted in flexoelectric polarization of a deformed director field.
The word 'skyrmion' honors British physicist Tony Skyrme, who in the 1960s devised such vortices to describe nuclear particles.