Abstract: Satellite laser communication has become a hot topic of communication technology research, and the optimal design of the optical system is an important research direction of the satellite laser communication terminal. Diffractive optical elements were introduced in this paper, to realize the miniaturization, integration, high efficiency of satellite laser communication terminals. Followed by the brief introduction of the principle of laser communication system, the potential applications of diffractive elements within a laser terminal were exhibited, such as beam shaping and splitting, optical filtering, antireflective coating, aberration and thermal compensation, etc. A design example of laser terminal including diffractive elements was presented, and the consequential simulation results demonstrate the advantage compared with conventional refractive elements.