Abstract: We have calculated the binding energies of excitons in quantum well structures based on ionic semiconductors by including the electron–hole interactions with the longitudinal optical phonon field. We have taken into account these interactions by using different effective interaction potentials between the electron and the hole as derived by Haken, by Aldrich and Bajaj, and by Pollman and Buttner. We have calculated the binding energies of excitons in several ionic quantum well structures as functions of well width using these effective potentials by following a variational approach. We find that the values of the exciton binding energies calculated using these potentials are always larger than those obtained using a Coulomb potential screened by a static dielectric constant. We compare our results with those of some recent calculations Ver menos