The applications of the second HgCdTe Infrared Focal Plane Arrays(IRFPA) have exploded in the past 10 years, meanwhile the third IRFPA has developed rapidly. This article makes a brief retrospect in development of HgCdTe IRFPA detector, combines with applications of HgCdTe IRFPA detector, summarizes the research works and the engineering applications of HgCdTe IRFPA detector and looks forward to the further development of HgCdTe IRFPA detector.