Homoepitaxially grown nitrogen-doped ZnTe layers have been exposed to a hydrogen (deuterium) plasma. After hydrogen (deuterium) diffusion, an infrared absorption band appears at 3346cm−1(2489cm−1).It is assigned to the vibrational stretching mode of the N–H (N–D) bond. It is also shown that the absence of such detectable bands in heteroepitaxially grown ZnTe/CdZnTe layers can be explained by thermal strains originating from the difference between the ZnTe and the CdZnTe thermal expansion coefficients. ©1998 American Institute of Physics.