This paper describes some recent results on the growth of mercury cadmium telluride (HgCdTe) on Si(111) substrate at different incident laser energies by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). An Nd:YAG-pulsed laser with a wavelength of 1064 nm was used as the laser source. The influence of the incident laser energy on the crystalline quality, surface morphology, composition and resistivity of HgCdTe thin films was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), selected area electron diffraction (SAED), atomic force microscopy (AFM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and four-point probe. The results show that in our experimental conditions, the HgCdTe thin film deposited at 150 mJ has a high quality, and the composition of the film is closest to that of the target. When the incident laser energy is over 200 mJ, the HgCdTe film becomes unstable, and the quality is degraded. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.