Abstract: The illustrative embodiment of the invention is a tunable nanomechanical near-field grating capable of varying the intensity of a diffraction mode of an optical output signal. In accordance with the illustrative embodiment, the tunable nanomechanical near-field grating comprises a first and second sub-grating, each sub-grating having line-elements with width and thickness less than the operating wavelength of light with which the grating interacts. A plurality of lateral apertures is formed by the two sub-gratings, each aperture comprising the space between one line-element of the first sub-grating and at least one line-element of the second sub-grating. One of the first or second sub-gratings is capable of motion such that at least one of aperture width and aperture depth changes, causing a perturbation to the near-field intensity distribution of the tunable nanomechanical near-field grating and a corresponding change to the far-field emission of the tunable nanomechanical near-field grating.