Interband Cascade Laser (ICL) and Quantum Cascade Laser (QCL) are currently the mainstream mid-infrared semiconductor coherent light sources. Among them, QCL has the advantage of watt-level high power in the spectral band above 4 μm, and the power consumption is usually high. ICLs are characterized by low power consumption and operate in the 3~5 μm spectral band. This band contains a wealth of molecular fundamental modes, such as alkane molecules, which are important in the petrochemical industry, SO₂ and formaldehyde, which are closely related to environmental pollution, as well as NO and H₂S, which are biomarkers in the medical and health fields. At present, most of the high-sensitivity optical sensing systems based on mid-infrared laser absorption spectroscopy technology ranging from 10^-6 to 10^-9 use single-mode ICLs with low power consumption as the coherent light sources.It is known that one-dimensional Distributed Feedback (DFB) gratings buried near the active region are most commonly used in mode selection for InP-based semiconductor lasers thanks to the mature InP regrowth technology. However, it is hard to regrow the antimonide superlattice waveguide structure of an ICL on a grating layer, which makes the buried grating structure impossible for a DFB ICL. Even for the simplest surface gratings, since an ICL epitaxial structure is usually capped with a thin lattice mismatched InAs layer, the surface grating can only be etched in the InAs/AlSb superlattice waveguide layer. The etching rate of InAs and AlSb is different, resulting in non-smooth grating side walls. As a result, several grating schemes have been reported so far. For example, a high refractive index Ge layer was deposited on the surface of the ICL structure to avoid etching the grating in the superlattice waveguide, where a 1^st DFB grating was fabricated by electron-beam lithography and lift-off. In such a process, it should be noted that the Ge layer is relatively easy to fall off. In contrast to the non-crystalline Ge layer, another surface DFB grating ICL was reported recently, in which a 200-nm-thick epitaxial GaSb top layer was used as the grating layer. Etching the grating in the GaSb layer avoids the problem of non-uniform etching rates of InAs and AlSb, which can improve the grating quality.So far, the highest room temperature continuous wave power of 55 mW was achieved by the fourth-order DFB ICLs, in which the gratings were fabricated by dry etch on both side walls of the laser ridge. The process of etching the grating with a high aspect ratio is a great challenge. In addition, the Side-Mode Suppression Ratios (SMSRs) of single-mode emission are low. Recently, DFB ICLs with two sets of gratings were reported, in which a top 1^st sampling grating realized single-mode emission and high-order side-wall gratings suppressed the high-order horizontal mode. The laser exhibited a high output power and high SMSRs. From the point of view of processing, the yield of lateral metal gratings placed on both sides of the laser ridge is relatively high. Nanoplus offers lateral metal grating DFB ICLs emitting at a wide wavelength range with low threshold currents and low output power of several milliwatts.In this review we compare and analyze the performance of several DFB ICLs with different grating configurations, and discuss the dominant loss mechanisms and the improvement routes. In addition, vertical cavity surface emission and photonic crystal ICLs are also introduced. Their performances are compared to the DFB ICLs. Although the performance of these two kinds of single-mode ICLs is not satisfactory and cannot be used as a practical single-mode light source at present, their research is still in its infancy, and it is expected that more in-depth research can improve the device's performance in the future.