Thermoacoustically driven pulse tube refrigerator, a novel cryocooler without any moving components using heat energy as driving power, attracts much efforts from the researchers in the field of cryogenics and refrigeration in the past decades. After a short introduction of the history about thermoacoustics, we presented the key technology, followed by a detailed review on theoretical and experimental developments and advances of thermoacoustics.The prospective research emphases are also presented at the end of this review.