Tin plated aluminum box lugs ( the usual kind in a lot of 120 volt to 600 volt stuff ) is a proven product and in a lot of environments lives a lot longer than unplated copper lugs.

SquareD's tin plated aluminum products ( using the Alstan 80 process ) are also proven. I would stay away from silver plating because silver develops a nonconductive black tarnish. Silver also has some other problems such as turning into a conductive metal wool when exposed to hydrogen sulfide. There is also some belief that silver can solid to solid diffuse into wire insulation.

I know someone who has a 23 year old house about 1/2 a mile east of Interstate 271 in Pepper Pike, Ohio. The catalytic converters are already eating the copper wiring that is inside of his house. There is a reason why there are antioxidant compounds that are for use with copper wire.

Every instance of where I have hooked up a plastics machine or air compressor with aluminum shows that all you have to do is to fan out the wire strands, cut off the sharp tips, clean each strand with #220 silicon carbide abrasive paper, and then grease each strand with antioxidant compound. There are also issues such as overstripping the conductor so that you can have a strand bending area and using a screwdriver shaft to establish a bending radius and using a hose clamp to recompress the wire strand and then chamfering the outside strand with a file so that they will slipp into the lugs but that is the general idea. Compact stranded wire strand have some concave surfaces that are difficult to clean but I have found that if I hold 1 end of a silicon carbide paper strip with my little, ring, middle fingers and use my thumb and index fingers to press the other end around the wire strand I get excellent results.

The one problem that I have not licked is cleaning antioxidant off of my tools and hands in the field without having toi expose my hands to brake cleaning spray.

Oh yeah, Sefcor makes lugs that you weld to aluminum conductor with a tungsten inert gas welder. This simplifies the silicon carbide paper-elbow grease-electrical grease problem to 2 flat surface each lug. I asked Alcan about this and they said that I should bridge the wires strand using 4043 filler rod.

You can also get lugs that you exothermically weld to copper wire. You would still need to use silicon carbide paper to clean off copper oxide after the lug cools.