Brief summaries of the precipitation of tellurium in (Hg,Cd)Te during the quench from the recrystallization anneal of the solid state recrystallization process and the subsequent dissolution of these precipitates during the postanneal are given. It is shown that if vacancies and interstitials are considered to be the only important point defects in the lattice, the observed mechanisms of precipitation and annihilation require that tellurium in excess of stoichiometry must be accommodated by metal vacancies. Diffusion from the mercury ambient during postanneal then must occur by metal interstitials. Enhanced self‐diffusion on the metal sublattice is shown to occur along grain and subgrain boundaries. The most significant source of dark current in CID imagers fabricated on (Hg,Cd)Te is shown to be a sufficiently high dislocation density in a pixel.