  We present a molecular simulation study of the structure of linear
dendronized polymers. We use excluded volume interactions in the context of a
generic coarse-grained molecular model whose geometrical parameters are tuned
to represent a poly(para-phenylene) backbone with benzyl ether, Frechet type
dendrons. We apply Monte Carlo sampling in order to investigate the formation
of packing-induced chiral structures along the polymer backbone of these
chemically non-chiral systems. We find that helical structures can be formed,
usually with defects consisting of domains with reversed helical handedness.
Clear signs of helical arrangements of the dendrons begin to appear for
dendritic generation g=4, while for g=5 these arrangements dominate and perfect
helices can even be observed as equilibrium structures obtained from certain
types of starting configurations.
