Electrically controlled kinetics of polar solitons in chiral nematics

Abstract External fields can drive solitons into directed motion, making them promising carriers for information transport. However, controlling soliton motion and interactions remains challenging because many liquid-crystal topological solitons exhibit symmetry-constrained dynamics. Here, we report electrically driven polar solitons in chiral nematic liquid crystals. Flexoelectric torque, dielectric coupling, and chirality generate head–tail polarity and dipole-like behavior, enabling nonreciprocal dynamics and tunable interactions. By varying voltage amplitude, bias, and waveform, solitons exhibit perturbation-sensitive drift, circular, and linear trajectories. Head-to-head alignment causes repulsion, whereas head-to-tail pairing leads to attraction or fusion. Three-dimensional topology analysis further reveals that the polar soliton contains a closed nematic disclination loop with a finite-order Q -tensor core. The loop remains topologically nontrivial, whereas the soliton trajectory is selected dynamically through the field-dependent balance of elastic, dielectric, flexoelectric, and dissipative responses. These results establish a mechanism for programmable motion and interaction of defect-containing solitons in soft anisotropic matter.