Thermal remote sensing is a promising technique that develops for not a long time in remote sensing of minerals. The technique development is summarized comprehensively in terms of minerals emissivity spectra characteristic, data processing, information retrieval and application. On the basis of this summarization, the development difficulties are discussed and applications for geology are predicted. Obtaining hyperspectral data is development direction; Atmosphere is a dominating factor that affects data quality, and high precision atmosphere correction must be resolved. Quality research of emissivity spectra mechanism has gained some advances, and quantitative research is development direction. Because minerals class (include minerals containing no water) and contents are retrieved by the technique, it can be applied not only on mine exploration but also on basic geological research.