The compound Ethyl acetate is written Ch3CH2COO- is a polar compound. A lot of confusion exists in regard to ethyl acetate as a polar or non-polar material, but it should be understood that “polar” is a relative property in chemist.
This confusion or lack of clarity is worsened by the fact that organic chemists and material scientist take ethyl acetate polar and non-polar respectively. Material scientist consider ethyl acetate non polar. This they consider so because ethyl acetate is less polar than materials like water and DMSO, though there is some cancellation in ethyl acetate that makes it is considered polar.
According to organic chemists ethyl acetate is a polar material. They consider it so because it is more polar than hexane, diethyl ether and dichloromethane which are the other solvents we use frequently.
The biggest difference between polar and non-polar molecule is that, polar molecules contains bond dipoles, which do not cancel each other, while non polar molecule bonds cancel each other.
Ethyl acetate has 2 O, which result in to two atoms not equal and hence electrons distributed unequally, the molecule is going to have regions with different dipolar moments (+or -), which gives us a polar molecule.