Two new diarylamine-substituted 1, 8-naphthalimide derivatives are synthesized by Cu I/18-crown-6/K2CO3 catalyst system and characterized by Fourier transform infrared （FT- IR）, ^1H-NMR and elemental analyses. The UV-vis absorption and photoluminescent （PL）spectra of the systems in n-hexane, tetrahydrofuran（THF）, and CH2Cl2 are investigated. These naphthalimide molecules have an absorption band centered at about 450 nm, which is assigned to an intramolecular chargetransfer （ICT）transition, and they emit light at 492, 501 nm in a nonpolar solvent such as n-hexane, and at 600, 620 nm in a polar solvent such as CH2Cl2. From the Lippert-Mataga equation, the difference of the dipole moment between the excited state and the ground state is estimated to be 9.2 and 9.8 D for 4- （ diphenylamine ）-N-（ 2-methoxyphenyl ）-1, 8-naphthalimide （ DMN-1 ） and 4-（ 2-naphthylphenylamine ）-N-（ 2- methoxyphenyl）-1, 8-naphthalimide （DMN-2）, respectively. This large change in the dipole moment upon excitation is typical for photoinduced ICT processes.
