Data associated with: Haze evolution in temperate exoplanet atmospheres through surface energy measurements

Photochemical hazes are important opacity sources in temperate exoplanet
atmospheres, hindering current observations from characterizing exoplanet
atmospheric compositions. The haziness of an atmosphere is determined by
the balance between haze production and removal. However, the
material-dependent removal physics of the haze particles is currently
unknown under exoplanetary conditions. Here we provide
experimentally-measured surface energies for a grid of temperate exoplanet
hazes to characterize haze removal in exoplanetary atmospheres. We found
large variations of surface energies for hazes produced under different
energy sources, atmospheric compositions, and temperatures. The surface
energies of the hazes were found to be the lowest around 400 K for the
cold plasma samples, leading to the lowest removal rates. We show a
suggestive correlation between haze surface energy and atmospheric
haziness with planetary equilibrium temperature. We hypothesize that
habitable zone exoplanets could be less hazy, as they would possess
high-surface-energy hazes which can be removed efficiently.