We report our investigation of the influence of annealing on the behavior of dislocations in CdTe and cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) crystals. The results are discussed taking into account the tellurium diffusion from inclusions. The effect of thermal treatment on the defect structure of CZT was studied by selective etching. Bissoli's etchant was used for revealing dislocation loops, inclusions and other defects as the most effective for (111)-oriented CZT surface. The results of selective etching were evaluated by IR microscopy and AFM for a series of systematically annealed CdTe and CZT single crystals. We studied the infrequent effect of the inclusions tracking near star-like dislocation-specific locations after post-growth annealing. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.