Nitrogen acceptors confined in a CdZnTe single quantum well, grown by molecular beam epitaxy, are investigated by different optical methods. The transitions related to nitrogen acceptors confined in the well are observed in the doping range between 1017and 1018/cm3. The temperature and excitation intensity dependence of the nitrogen‐related transitions in photoluminescence spectra indicates that these transitions correspond to the nitrogen acceptor bound excitons and to free electron to neutral nitrogen acceptor recombination. The binding energy of nitrogen acceptors confined in an 130‐A˚‐wide Cd0.96Zn0.04Te/Cd0.86Zn0.12Te structure is deduced to be 51.7±0.5 meV from this study. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.