In recent years, the type II superlattices (T2SL) infrared detector has experienced incredible improvements in material growth, device structure design, device fabrication techniques, which make the T2SL become the most popular infrared detector material, besides HgCdTe. This article briefly introduces the advantage of the T2SL material, summarizes the international research status in T2SL-based photodetectors, reviews the history of technology development of T2SL-based photodetectors and analyzes the drawback of the research of T2SL material and device technology in China.