•FTIR spectra of β-alanine-d3 isolated in argon matrices are obtained.•UV irradiation is used to change populations of β-alanine-d3 conformers.•Conformational composition of β-alanine-d3 is determined.•Inclusion of β-alanine in argon matrices is modeled.•Matrix splitting of the experimental bands is explained.Low temperature FTIR spectra of β-alanine-d3 isolated in argon matrices are used to determine the conformational composition of this compound. UV irradiation of the matrix samples is found to change the relative populations of the β-alanine-d3 conformers. The populations of conformers I and II with an ND⋯O intramolecular H-bond decrease after the UV irradiation while the populations of conformer V with an N⋯DO H-bond and conformer IV which has no intramolecular H-bonds increase. This behavior of the β-alanine-d3 conformers are used to separate the bands of the different conformers. The analysis of the experimental FTIR spectra is based on the calculated harmonic B3LYP/6-311++G(df,pd) frequencies and on the MP2/aug-cc-pVDZ frequencies calculated with a method that includes anharmonic effects. Polynomial scaling of the calculated frequencies is used to achieve better agreement with the experimental data. The observation of the wide band of the OD stretching vibration at 2201 cm−1 is a direct evidence of the presence of the β-alanine-d3 conformer V in the Ar matrix. In total ten bands of conformer V are detected. The influence of the matrix environment on the structures and the IR spectra of the β-alanine and β-alanine-d3 conformers is investigated. This involves performing calculations of the β-alanine conformers embedded in argon clusters containing from 163 to 166 argon atoms using the M06-2X and B3LYP(GD3BJ) density-functional methods. Good agreement between the calculated and the experimental matrix splitting is demonstrated.

In this work, we describe how the energies obtained in molecular calculations performed without assuming the Born–Oppenheimer (BO) approximation can be augmented with corrections accounting for the leading relativistic effects. Unlike the conventional BO approach, where these effects only concern the relativistic interactions between the electrons, the non-BO approach also accounts for the relativistic effects due to the nuclei and due to the coupling of the coupled electron–nucleus motion. In the numerical sections, the results obtained with the two approaches are compared. The first comparison concerns the dissociation energies of the two-electron isotopologues of the H2 molecule, H2, HD, D2, T2, and the HeH+ ion. The comparison shows that, as expected, the differences in the relativistic contributions obtained with the two approaches increase as the nuclei become lighter. The second comparison concerns the relativistic corrections to all 23 pure vibrational states of the HD+ ion. An interesting charge asymmetry caused by the nonadiabatic electron–nucleus interaction appears in this system, and this effect significantly increases with the vibration excitation. The comparison of the non-BO results with the results obtained with the conventional BO approach, which in the lowest order does not describe the charge-asymmetry effect, reveals how this effect affects the values of the relativistic corrections.