Novel naphthalimide-functionalized nanofibrous film was prepared by copolymerization and electrospinning. Vinyl naphthalimide monomer was synthesized and then copolymerized with methyl methacrylate via solution polymerization. This prepared copolymer was electrospun into nanofibrous film, which is an excellent sensing material and adsorbent for Cu2+. When the nanofibrous film was added into acetonitrile/aqueous solution, the presence of Cu2+ induces the formation of a 1:1 metal-ligand complex, which exhibits a 48 nm blue-shifted from 487 nm to 439 nm in fluorescence spectra. The fluorescent film shows high sensitivities due to the high surface area-to-volume ratio of the nanofibrous film structures. The detection limit for Cu2+ is 20 x 10(-6) M. Furthermore, the prepared materials could be utilized as an adsorbent to remove Cu2+ in aqueous solution efficiently, the adsorption capacity was 10.39 mg of Cu2+ ions per gram of nanofibrous film. All of the results in this paper show that the naphthalimide-functionalized nanofibrous film made by electrospun technique has excellent sensitivities and adsorbent properties toward Cu2+ over other metal ions. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.