Abstract
We study trapping of diffusing particles by a periodic non-uniform boundary formed by absorbing spikes protruding from a reflecting flat base. It is argued that such a boundary can be replaced by a flat uniform partially absorbing boundary with a properly chosen effective trapping rate. Assuming that the spikes are short compared to the inter-spike distance, we propose an approximate expression which gives the trapping rate in terms of geometric parameters of the boundary and the particle diffusivity. To validate this result, we compare some theoretical predictions based on the expression for the effective trapping rate with corresponding quantities obtained from Brownian dynamics simulations.