Ionic & Nonpolar/polar

[CrystalBruin3C]

What determines an ionic bond or when it's polar or nonpolar within a compound?

[peytonruiz 1H]

Hi Crystal!

Ionic vs Covalent:
A good rule of thumb to use when determining if a bond is ionic or covalent is to use the difference in the two atoms' electronegativity. If the difference is 2.0 or greater, it is ionic. If it is 1.5 or less, then it is covalent. For values in between 1.5 and 2.0, it is tricky to determine if the bond is ionic or covalent.
(Using this, you can predict that a metal bonded with a non-metal makes an ionic bond)

Polar vs Nonpolar:
Polarity arises when there is not an equal sharing of electrons between two atoms (one atom has higher electron density than the other).

Hope this helps!

[kaushalrao2H]

Adding on to the previous reply:

Truly nonpolar covalent bonds arise only when the two elements bonded are identical (ex. diatomic molecules). If the two elements are different, then there's always going to be a little bit of electronegativity difference that results in a polar covalent bond.

[Guangyu Li 2J]

Actually the difference of electronegativity determines whether the chemical bond is ionic or covalent.

When the electronegativity difference is larger than certain level, the electrons would be attracted by the atom with a larger electronegativity and an ionic bond is formed. However, when the electronegativity is not that large, the two atoms are only partial charged. By sharing electrons unevenly, a polar covalent bond is formed. For the two atoms with the same electronegativity, they share electrons evenly and form a non polar covalent bond.