As the zero-temperature limit of the optimal MaxFlux path converges asymptotically to the minimum energy path, we employ this limit to approximate minimum energy paths and TSs. To reduce computational cost, we directly evaluate eq 16 using a basis function expansion of the path, which has proven effective in other variational reaction path optimizations. Following refs 31 and 32, we expand the path x(t) using B-spline functions ϕ α (t) and a 3n atoms -dimensional vector c α