He was part of the team that succeeded in 1966 in the detection of a two-dimensional electron gas and its quantum properties in semiconductors.
[1] John Robert Schrieffer had predicted 1956 quantum effects in electron transport due to the two-dimensional geometry in metal-insulator-semiconductor structure (MIS).
The detection was first successfully achieved by the team of Fang, Alan B. Fowler, Phillip J. Stiles and Webster Eugene Howard at IBM in 1966 by applying strong magnetic fields.
In 1984 he was elected an IEEE Fellow for "the discovery and explanation of two-dimensional properties of silicon inversion layers and for contributions to semiconductor device research.
[4] In 1988 Fang received with Alan B. Fowler and Phillip J. Stiles the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize.