Variable-area hydrogenation of HgCdTe photovoltaic(PV) detectors was studied.It was found that the current-voltage(I-V) characteristic was obviously improved after hydrogenation,wherein dark current was gradually decreased as the hydrogenation area enlarged,and the zero-biased resistance was increased,meanwhile the current noise was reduced.By the comparison of experimental results and numerical fitting results,it was found that the improvement of I-V curves was related to hydrogenation zone.When the hydrogenation process was focused on the N-type zone,hydrogenation effect was mainly due to the reduction of minority carrier recombination centers caused by implantation process,which could increase the minority carrier lifetime.When the hydrogenation was enlarged to P-type zone,the improvement was primarily the result of the oppression of trap density in the surface depletion region,which led to the decrease of trap-assisted tunneling current.So it was concluded that the junctions of PV detectors formed by ion implantation were N P type.